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Design of Passive Micromixers Using the COMSOL Multiphysics Software Package
Conference: COMSOL Conference, At Boston
  • Matthew Itomlenskis, Cleveland State University
  • Petru S. Fodor, Cleveland State University
  • Miron Kaufman, Cleveland State University
Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
1-1-2008
Disciplines
Abstract

Relief patterning of the surface of microchannels has been actively pursued as a method of promoting mixing in systems with a low Reynold's number (<<100). For example, structures such as the staggered herring bone (SHB), which consists of periodic groves and ridges distributed along the channel length, improve mixing by inducing counter – rotating helical flows in pressure driven systems. In this work, we explore by using the COMSOL Multiphysics package and its Chemical Engineering Module, the possibility of enhancing the mixing quality of two fluids in a microchannel with a non-periodic fractal pattern of ridges on the channel bottom. The quality of the mixing between two fluids is quantified with an entropic measure. For the binary fluid system, we compare the mixing performance of channels with ridges locations determined by employing the Weierstrass fractal function to the performance of SHB designs. The mixing efficiency associated with the Weierstrass function based designs is consistently better than for the SHB counterparts.

Citation Information
Matthew Itomlenskis, Petru S. Fodor and Miron Kaufman. "Design of Passive Micromixers Using the COMSOL Multiphysics Software Package" Conference: COMSOL Conference, At Boston (2008)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/petru_fodor/16/