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Updated: Sep 21, 2025

An Analog Macroscopic Technique for Studying Molecular Hydrodynamic Processes in Dense Gases and Liquids
Published on: December 4, 2017
Nonlocal hydrodynamic model for gravity-driven transport in nanochannels
1Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
It has been established that Newton's law of viscosity fails for fluids under strong confinement as the strain-rate varies significantly over molecular length-scales. We thereby investigate if a nonlocal shear stress accounting for the strain-rate of an adjoining region by a convolution relation with a nonlocal viscosity kernel can be employed to predict the gravity-driven isothermal flow of a Weeks-Chandler-Andersen fluid in a nanochannel. We estimate, using the local average density model, the fluid's viscosity kernel from isotropic bulk systems of corresponding state points by the sinusoidal transverse force method. A continuum model is proposed to solve the nonlocal hydrodynamics whose solutions capture the key features and agree qualitatively with the results of non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, with deviations observed mostly near the fluid-channel interface.
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