Effect of Particle Sticking on the Micro-PIV Measurement in a Micro-Bypass Channel Flow

Micro-resolution Particle Image Velocimetry (Micro-PIV) was used to measure the flow in a micro-branch (Micro-Bypass). In this paper, effects of particle lump at the tip of a Micro-branch and difficulties of Micro-PIV measurements for microfluidics with branch passage were described. Micro-bypass was composed of a straight channel (200μm width×80μm height) and two branches which has 100μm width×80μm height. One of branches was straight and the other was curved. Experiments were performed at three regions along streamwise direction (enterance, middle and exit of branch) and five planes along vertical direction (0,± 10,±20μm) for the range of Re = 0.24, 1.2, 2.4. Numerical simulation was done to compare with the measurements and understand the effects of particle lump at the tip of branch.