Parametric investigation on mixing in a micromixer with two-layer crossing channels

This work presents a parametric investigation on flow and mixing in a chaotic micromixer consisting of two-layer crossing channels proposed by Xia et al. (Lab Chip 5: 748–755, 2005). The flow and mixing performance were numerically analyzed using commercially available software ANSYS CFX-15.0, which solves the Navier–Stokes and mass conservation equations with a diffusion–convection model in a Reynolds number range from 0.2 to 40. A mixing index based on the variance of the mass fraction of the mixture was employed to evaluate the mixing performance of the micromixer. The flow structure in the channel was also investigated to identify the relationship with mixing performance. The mixing performance and pressure-drop were evaluated with two dimensionless geometric parameters, i.e., ratios of the sub-channel width to the main channel width and the channels depth to the main channel width. The results revealed that the mixing index at the exit of the micromixer increases with increase in the channel depth-to-width ratio, but decreases with increase in the sub-channel width to main channel width ratio. And, it was found that the mixing index could be increased up to 0.90 with variations of the geometric parameters at Re = 0.2, and the pressure drop was very sensitive to the geometric parameters.