Numerical study on mixing performance of 3D passive micromixer with scaling elements

Abstract

In this study, we applied scaling elements to design micromixers. We designed four passive micromixers with different structures, including common micromixer, common micromixer with scaling elements, snake-like micromixer, and snake-like micromixer with scaling elements (SMWSE). We used COMSOL Multiphysics 5.2a software to simulate and analyze. The numerical simulation results show that the scaling elements can cause the chaotic convection between the fluids with different concentrations. Through the analysis of the variation in concentration and velocity on the cross section of micromixers, it can conclude that the micromixer with scaling elements has high mixing efficiency, and the mixing efficiency of SMWSE is more than 92% at all fluid velocities.