Computational Analysis of Flow and Mixing in Micromixers

초록

This chapter introduces the computational framework and provides a detailed analysis on the different numerical techniques for the analyses of flow and mixing in micromixers. Flow and mixing analyses are based on both the Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches; relative advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches and suitability to different types of mixing problems are analyzed. This chapter also discusses the various facets of numerical schemes subjected to discretization errors and computational grid requirements. Since a large number of studies are based on commercial CFD packages, relevant details of these packages to the mixing problem are presented. This chapter concludes with mixing characterization technique using concentration data obtained on a computational grid, and provides the basis for performance evaluation of different micromixer designs. This chapter consists of three sections. Section 3.1 presents the Eulerian approach for flow and mixing analyses, different mixing models, boundary conditions, and the numerical approach employed in obtaining solutions of the governing equations. The Lagrangian approach is presented in Sect. 3.2. In the final section, the method for mixing quantification is discussed. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.