Study of pulsatile pressure-driven electroosmotic flows through an elliptic cylindrical microchannel with the Navier slip condition

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to study an unsteady electric field-driven and pulsatile pressure-driven flow of a Newtonian fluid in an elliptic cylindrical microchannel with Navier boundary wall slip. The governing equations of the slip flow and distributions of electric potential and charge densities are the modified Navier-Stokes equations, the Poisson equation and the Nernst-Planck equations, respectively. Analytical and numerical analyses based on the Mathieu and modified Mathieu equations are performed to investigate the interplaying effects of pulsatile pressure gradients and the slip lengths on the electroosmotic flow.

Keywords

• microchannel flow
• elliptic cross-section
• Navier-Stokes equations
• pulsatile pressure gradient
• elctroosmosis
• electric potential