Numerical and Experimental Study of Mixing Characteristics in a Spiral Micromixer

Abstract

ABSTRACT Significant enhancement of mixing performance can be achieved by Dean vortices in spiral channels. In order to deeply explore the mixing mechanisms and variation laws in spiral micromixers, this work designed a spiral micromixer and adopted a combined method of experiments and numerical simulations to analyze the mixing performance and mechanisms of spiral micromixers, wavy micromixers, T‐shaped micromixers, and spiral micromixers with different half‐axis length ratios. The study reveals that within the range of Reynolds numbers ( Re ) from 1 to 200, the mixing performance of spiral micromixers is superior to that of the unfolded wavy micromixers and T‐shaped micromixers. For spiral micromixers, there exists an optimal half‐axis length ratio. When the half‐axis length ratio is 0.65 and the Reynolds number is between 50 and 175, the mixing index increases by 4.3% to 25%. This research provides a reference basis for the structural design of the micromixer.