A selection limiter of DSMC for near continuum flows

A selection limiter for the direct simulation monte carlo (DSMC) method is proposed to simulate near continuum flows. The selection limiter is calculated according to a continuum breakdown parameter and is used to limit the number of potential collision pairs. A Couette flow, a supersonic flow into a pitot probe and a nozzle plume flow are studied and compared with the standard DSMC to validate present method. It is found that its computational cost is about 35% of that of the standard DSMC method with satisfactory accuracy in the near continuum regime.