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An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime
A fast mixing is critical for subsequent practical development of microfluidic devices, which are often used for assays in the detection of reagents and samples. The present work sets up computational fluid dynamics simulations to explore the flow characteristic and mixing mechanism of fluids in cro...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33923993 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12040462 |
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author | Yuan, Shuai Jiang, Bingyan Peng, Tao Li, Qiang Zhou, Mingyong |
author_facet | Yuan, Shuai Jiang, Bingyan Peng, Tao Li, Qiang Zhou, Mingyong |
author_sort | Yuan, Shuai |
collection | PubMed |
description | A fast mixing is critical for subsequent practical development of microfluidic devices, which are often used for assays in the detection of reagents and samples. The present work sets up computational fluid dynamics simulations to explore the flow characteristic and mixing mechanism of fluids in cross-shaped mixers within the laminar regime. First, the effects of increasing an operating parameter on local mixing quality along the microchannels are investigated. It is found that sufficient diffusion cannot occur even though the concentration gradient is large at a high Reynolds number. Meanwhile, a method for calculating local mixing efficiency is also characterized. The mixing efficiency varies exponentially with the flow distance. Second, in order to optimize the cross-shaped mixer, the effects of design parameters, namely aspect ratio, mixing angle and blockage, on mixing quality are captured and the visualization of velocity and concentration distribution are demonstrated. The results show that the aspect ratio and the blockage play an important role in accelerating the mixing process. They can improve the mixing efficiency by increasing the mass transfer area and enhancing the chaotic advection, respectively. In contrast, the inflow angle that affects dispersion length is not an effective parameter. Besides, the surface roughness, which makes the disturbance of fluid flow by roughness more obvious, is considered. Three types of rough elements bring benefits for enhancing mixing quality due to the convection induced by the lateral velocity. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8072938 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80729382021-04-27 An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime Yuan, Shuai Jiang, Bingyan Peng, Tao Li, Qiang Zhou, Mingyong Micromachines (Basel) Article A fast mixing is critical for subsequent practical development of microfluidic devices, which are often used for assays in the detection of reagents and samples. The present work sets up computational fluid dynamics simulations to explore the flow characteristic and mixing mechanism of fluids in cross-shaped mixers within the laminar regime. First, the effects of increasing an operating parameter on local mixing quality along the microchannels are investigated. It is found that sufficient diffusion cannot occur even though the concentration gradient is large at a high Reynolds number. Meanwhile, a method for calculating local mixing efficiency is also characterized. The mixing efficiency varies exponentially with the flow distance. Second, in order to optimize the cross-shaped mixer, the effects of design parameters, namely aspect ratio, mixing angle and blockage, on mixing quality are captured and the visualization of velocity and concentration distribution are demonstrated. The results show that the aspect ratio and the blockage play an important role in accelerating the mixing process. They can improve the mixing efficiency by increasing the mass transfer area and enhancing the chaotic advection, respectively. In contrast, the inflow angle that affects dispersion length is not an effective parameter. Besides, the surface roughness, which makes the disturbance of fluid flow by roughness more obvious, is considered. Three types of rough elements bring benefits for enhancing mixing quality due to the convection induced by the lateral velocity. MDPI 2021-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8072938/ /pubmed/33923993 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12040462 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Yuan, Shuai Jiang, Bingyan Peng, Tao Li, Qiang Zhou, Mingyong An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title | An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title_full | An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title_fullStr | An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title_full_unstemmed | An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title_short | An Investigation of Flow Patterns and Mixing Characteristics in a Cross-Shaped Micromixer within the Laminar Regime |
title_sort | investigation of flow patterns and mixing characteristics in a cross-shaped micromixer within the laminar regime |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072938/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33923993 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi12040462 |
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