Rarefied Gas Flow Through a Circular Orifice and Short Tubes

Rarefied gas flow through a circular orifice and short tubes has been investigated experimentally, and the conductance of the aperture has been calculated for Knudsen number between 2 × 10−4 and 50. The unsteady approach was adopted, in which the decay of pressure in an upstream chamber was measured as a function of time. For flow with high pressure ratio, empirical equations of the conductance are proposed as a function of Reynolds number, or Knudsen number, and length-to-diameter ratio of the apertures.