Aswin R
Micro/nanofluidics Research Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Trivandrum, Kerala -695016, India
Ranjith S Kumar
Micro/nanofluidics Research Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Trivandrum, Kerala -695016, India
This article numerically investigates the hydrodynamics
of a non-parallel superhydrophobic microchannel realized
by entrapping air in the cavities located between transversely
oriented ribs. The superhydrophobic walls are being inclined
from 1° to 5° in both converging and diverging formats. Continuity and Navier-Stokes equations are solved with
pertinent boundary conditions using the Ansys-Fluent commercial software. To mimic the transverse ribs and cavities, mixed no-slip and no-shear boundary conditions are adopted at the boundary. Simulations are performed by varying channel width, Reynolds number, shear-free fraction, cavity offset, protrusion angle and wall inclination. The effect of liquid-gas interface shape (flat, convex and concave) and offset on hydraulic resistance are analyzed in detail. Here, Poiseuille number is used to monitor the hydrodynamic drag. The purpose of this study is to compare the hydrodynamic performance of non-parallel superhydrophobic microchannels with conventional parallel microchannels and observed that the divergent channel
exhibited better performance characteristics.