Numerical Investigation and Geometric Parameterization of Lamination Inlet of Passive Micromixer

A lamination inlet is proposed and optimized in this paper. The perpendicular incoming fluids are applied instead of parallel type. The total mixing length is fixed at 3.2 mm and the depth of channel is fixed at 0.1 mm. The tested Reynolds number is calculated at the entrance of downstream straight channel. The tested Reynolds numbers range from 5 to 200. The perpendicular incoming type enhances the mass-convection and enlarges the interface area. Two parameters, the radius of holes (R) and the distance between two holes (D₁), are selected to achieve the optimization. Numerical simulation is used to estimate the mixing performance and flow characteristics. The results show that the vortices are generated in the microchannel. The interface becomes irregular. In order to evaluate the mixing improvement, the parallel lamination is also simulated. The comparison shows that the perpendicular inlet type has better mixing efficiency than the parallel lamination type. This inlet type could be connected with certain mixing element to achieve the applications in biochemistry.