Dean flow velocity of shear-thickening SiO2 nanofluids in curved microchannels

Abstract

We report the effects of a curvilinear microchannel width, height, and radius of curvature, as well as the kinematic viscosity and axial velocity of shear-thickening nanofluids, on the average Dean velocity ( VDe) of the secondary flow in the microchannel. Manipulation of inertial and Dean drag forces in curvilinear microchannels has enabled high throughput and high-resolution size-based separation of microparticles and cells in various biomedical applications. VDe plays a deterministic role in the estimation of the Dean drag force and the design of these microfluidic devices. In spite of the previous numerical and experimental studies on VDe of Newtonian and shear-thinning viscoelastic fluids, VDe of shear-thickening metallic nanofluids, such as SiO2 nanoparticles in water, in curved microchannels is still unknown. Such shear-thickening fluids are being used in thermal microsystem applications and are on the verge of entering the field of inertial microfluidics for particle and cell sorting. Our investigations have shown that VDe of shear-thickening SiO2-water nanofluids scales directly with the channel width and the fluid axial velocity, while being inversely proportional with the SiO2 concentration and the channel radius of curvature. Our non-dimensional analysis has led to the development of an empirical correlation that relates VDe-based Reynolds number of the nanofluid to the Dean number and the normalized kinematic viscosity of the nanofluid. It provides a significant accuracy in estimating VDe of shear-thickening fluids, compared to application of Newtonian or shear-thinning equations in the literature, which could be useful towards future design of particle and cell sorting and washing microdevices.

Microparticle manipulation in viscoelastic flows inside curvilinear microchannels: a thorough fundamental study with application to simultaneous particle sorting and washing

“…Ducloué et al , 50 Yoon et al 51,52 and others 53–56 numerically investigated the effect of De number and fluid viscosity on the secondary vortices of shear-thinning fluids in curved microchannels. We experimentally studied the effects of channel geometry and fluid properties on the Dean velocity of shear-thinning PEO in water solutions 57 and shear-thickening SiO 2 nanofluids 58 in curvilinear microchannels. A modified empirical correlation was reported with a precise estimation of V De in the viscoelastic PEO solutions, as shown in eqn (3).…”

Experimental investigation of microparticle focusing in SiO2 nanofluids inside curvilinear microchannels

“…Initially, we investigated the average Dean velocity of SiO2 nanofluids in curved microchannels and reported a modified correlation for VDe, which significantly improved the VDe estimation as shown in Eq. 6 (Nikdoost and Rezai, 2022a).…”