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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yuan, Shuai, Jiang, Bingyan, Peng, Tao, Li, Qiang, Zhou, Mingyong
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
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.
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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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