Beyond the no-slip boundary condition.

This paper offers a simple macroscopic approach to the question of the slip boundary condition to be imposed upon the tangential component of the fluid velocity at a solid boundary. Plausible reasons are advanced for believing that it is the energy equation rather than the momentum equation that determines the correct fluid-mechanical boundary condition. The scheme resulting therefrom furnishes the following general, near-equilibrium linear constitutive relation for the slip velocity of mass along a relatively flat wall bounding a single-component gas or liquid: (v(m))(slip)=-α∂lnρ/∂s|(wall), where α and ρ are, respectively, the fluid's thermometric diffusivity and mass density, while the length δs refers to distance measured along the wall in the direction in which the slip or creep occurs. This constitutive relation is shown to agree with experimental data for gases and liquids undergoing thermal creep or pressure-driven viscous creep at solid surfaces.