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Since the majority of fluids in engineering and biology applications are non-Newtonian, a numerical investigation was performed on the mixing of non-Newtonian fluids. Chaotic advection is one of the useful mechanisms to enhance the mixing performance which can be generated using curved micromixers. Therefore, mixing of non-Newtonian fluids in curved micromixers was studied in this study. The power-law fluids with power-law indices between 0.49 and 1 and Reynolds numbers between 0.1 and 300 were investigated. Open source CFD code of Open-FOAM was utilized to simulate mixing process in micromixers. The results showed that the mixing index decreases and dimensionless pressure drop increases by decreasing the power-law index. The chaotic advection and mixing index increase by increasing the Reynolds number for all values of power-law index. In addition, micromixers with sharp turns in their geometries yielded efficient mixing performance for low power-law indices and low Reynolds numbers.

In this study, a numerical investigation was performed on the mixing of non-Newtonian power-law fluids in curved micromixers with power-law indices between 0.49 and 1 and Reynolds numbers between 0.1-300. The properties of water and CMC solution were used for simulation of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid flows, respectively. The effects of grooves embedded on the bottom wall of micromixers and geometrical parameters such as depth and angle of grooves on mixing performance were examined. The mixing of nonNewtonian fluids using this kind of micromixers has not been studied before. Eventually, using of inclined grooves with 30° inclination angle was studied. Open source CFD code of OpenFOAM was utilized to simulate the mixing process. The results showed that the grooves caused chaotic advection and improved the mixing performance but had no significant effect on dimensionless pressure drop. Also, the grooves with 30• angle showed better mixing index for all values of power-law indices.

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