Preliminary study on staggered herringbone micromixer design suitable for micro EDM milling

Abstract

This paper discusses interplay between the design of a Staggered Herringbone Micromixer (SHM) and micro Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) milling technology. SHM consists of a main channel and many herringbone lookalike grooves at the bottom, which enhance mixing. Firstly, a brief overview on how the technological model of micro EDM milling was constructed is presented. Anticorrosive stainless steel was used as a workpiece material on the basis of which the database for the technological model was established. In the second part the technological model was used for micromixer design optimization. Different SHM designs that can be machined in the same amount of time, were compered via their mixing efficiency. Mixing efficiency was estimated by performing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results show, that smaller and shallower grooves are not efficient in the terms of mixing. An important design parameter is also the orientation of the grooves. In the end, a favorable SHM design is presented.