Enhanced mixing plays an important role in biological and chemical analysis in microfluidic systems. Due to its small dimensions, the Reynolds number, which measures the importance of the inertia force relative to the viscous force, is very small for flows in microfluidic devices. Most methods used in generating mixing in macro-scale fluid flows require sufficiently large Reynolds numbers and they become ineffective when applied to micro-scale flows. Thus, the search for effective mixing mechanisms suitable for micro-scale flows is becoming an active area of research.
| Click below to see some animations of 100000 particles being dispersed by an electro-osmotic flow in a channel at Re=1 | ||||
 Slip velocity on top |
 Exact solution case (a) |
 Exact solution case (b) |
 Exact solution case (c) |
 Period T=3 |
 Period T=3 with random modulation |
 Period T=10 |
 Period T=10 with random modulation |
 Period T=20 |
 Period T=20 random modulation |
 Dispersion of a blob T=10 |
Dispersion of a blob T=20 |
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