Somarya Bhattacharyya
Department of Mechanical Engineering National Institute of Technology Durgapur, Durgapur – 713 209, India
Amaresh Dalal
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Ganesh Natarajan
Department of Mechanical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad, Palakkad – 678 557, India
Numerical simulations are carried out to study twodimensional
steady flow inside passive micromixers using modified Tesla structures. Passive micromixers are advantageous over active micromixers because of their low cost and they can be easily fabricated and integrated with on-chip microfluidic systems. In this study, the effect of Tesla structures on the mixing performance of a cross-T microchannel is examined. Mixing performance is analyzed with numerical simulations and mixing contours for the modified Tesla structures. The effect of various geometrical parameters of the Tesla structures, namely the distance (L2) radius (R), and the
number of modules (Nm) on the mixing efficiency and the
pressure drop, is analyzed. The results show that mixing can be
enhanced by increasing the number of modules (Nm) and
reducing L2 but at the expense of additional pressure drop and manufacturing difficulty. It is also observed that the mixing efficiency slightly increases with the radius upto 50 µm after which it decreases sharply.