Experimental Study on the Viscoelastic Flow Mixing in Microfluidics

Abstract

Background: The study of blood flow in vessels is always crucial to understand cardiovascular diseases such as arrhythmias, coronary artery disease and deep vein thrombosis. A viscoelastic fluid in a microchannel is modeled for the blood flow study. Methods: In this paper, we modeled the blood flow through a viscoelastic fluid in a microfluidic channel. The flow properties, especially the flow pattern and transient mixing of two fluid streams in a T-shaped microchannel, are experimentally studied. Results: It was found that the viscoelastic fluid has a transiently unstable flow pattern compared to the normal Newtonian fluid, and the mixing is also increased due to its elastic property. Similar to the pulsatile blood flow, the fluid is driven under a periodically pulsed stimulus, and the flow pattern and transient mixing are compared at different flow rates and driving period conditions. Conclusions: The integration of microfluidic technology with the blood flow research could provide a new approach to understand the related disease mechanism, which can also be used to analyze the drug mixing and delivery in the blood flow.

Keywords

• microfluidics
• viscoelastic flow
• mixing