Geometrically Similar Rectangular Passive Micromixers and the Scaling Validity on Mixing Efficiency and Pressure Drops

Abstract

In the present work, two geometrically similar passive geometries with dumbbell shape were designed to perturb the dominating viscous forces in the low Reynolds number (Re) flows of the fluids. The geometries were designated as PDM-I and PDM-II, in which all the linear dimensions were related by a constant scale factor of two. Mixing efficiencies and pressure drops of the species at various Reynolds number (Re) were calculated to estimate the scaling effect validations. Finally, the geometrically similar PDM geometries were fabricated in Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer to evaluate the scaling effect on the mixing efficiencies of the dyes and validated with the simulation results of species mixing.

Keywords

• passive micromixer
• cfd
• rectangular dumbbell
• polydimethylsiloxane (pdms)