CFD-based approach to design the heart-shaped micromixer with obstacles

Abstract Microfluidic devices/systems, including Micro-Total-Analysis-System (µTAS), Point of Care Testing (POCT) and Lab-On-a-Chip (LOC) are used in many chemical and biological assays applications. Among the vital tasks that these microfluidic devices must achieve essentially include a high degree of mixing and accordingly, micromixers are being used for the same purpose. The design depends on the yield required in particular application. In the proposed study, the four kinds of heart-shaped micromixers with different obstacles have been studied through simulations. The influence of the shape and size of different obstacles viz., circular shape, diamond shape, teardrop shape, and heart shape obstacles on the performance characteristics has been studied. The performance characteristics namely, the mixing index and pressure drop have been used. In accordance with the study, a heart-shaped micromixer with heart shape obstacles (HSM-HSO) has come out to be the most efficient micromixer due to the significant chaotic convection effect. The heart-shaped micromixer with heart shape obstacles (HSM-HSO) of size 0.350 µm × 0.350 µm has shown better performance for a wider range of Reynolds number (Re), i.e., mixing index of Re > 0.99, for Re of 0.1 and Re in the range of 15–45.

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