Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics (Jan 2016)

Numerical study of fluid mixing at different inlet flow-rate ratios in Tear-drop and Chain micromixers compared to a new H-C passive micromixer

  • Vladimir Viktorov,
  • Md Readul Mahmud,
  • Carmen Visconte

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/19942060.2016.1140075
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 182 – 192

Abstract

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A new split and recombine (SAR) passive micromixer, namely the H-C mixer, is presented. The performance of the micromixer is analyzed numerically at Reynolds numbers up to 100, varying the inlet flow-rate ratio. In order to validate the numerical model, tests for an inlet flow-rate ratio of 1 were carried out on the new H-C micromixer along with the established Tear-drop and Chain micromixers for comparison, and good correspondence was found between the differently obtained data. Contrary to the Tear-drop and Chain micromixers, the H-C micromixer exhibited a mixing efficiency greater than 90% independent of Reynolds numbers. In particular, no noticeable dependence on inlet flow-rate ratio was observed. Furthermore, the pressure drop along the H-C mixer was found to be lower than those along the already known mixers.

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