Design of a Micromixer With Herringbone Grooves Using Numerical Optimization Techniques

Optimization of a staggered herringbone groove micromixer has been performed by using three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis. The analysis of the degree of mixing is performed by the calculation of spatial data statistics. The calculation of the variance of the mass fraction at various nodes on a plane in the channel is used to quantify mixing. A numerical optimization technique is applied to optimize the shape of the grooves on a single wall of the channel. Two design variables, namely, the ratio of the groove depth to channel height and the angle of the groove, are selected for optimization. A mixing index is used as the objective function. The results of the optimization show that the mixing is very sensitive to the shape of the groove which can be used in controlling mixing in microdevices.