Numerical visualization and quantification of chaotic mixing for micromixers

摘要

We present a systematic way of visualization and quantification of mixing in chaotic micromixers with a periodic mixing protocol. We name it colored particle tracking method, which consists of three steps. One is flow analysis step to obtain periodic velocity field of a periodic mixing protocol. The other is particle tracking step. At the inlet, depending on the species of the fluids, particles are labeled with a specific color. Then, using the initial distribution of colored particles, we repeat integration procedure up to the end period. Finally, from thus obtained particle distribution, we can evaluate mixing performance. In the present study, we propose a new measure of mixing by adopting the concept of the information entropy. We applied the developed method to three micromixers with patterned grooves and were able to evaluate mixing performance both qualitatively and quantitatively.