On study of Electro-osmotic flow in a micro channel with obstacles using the Lattice-Boltzmann method

Motivated by the growing interest in the recent amount of attention received by nano and microchannels, electro-osmotic flows (EOFs) have become a reliable no moving part strategy to control fluid motion in various lab-on-chip devices. In the present work, a relatively new Lattice Boltzmann model has been used to study the electro-osmotic flows in a 2-D flat microchannel.The governing equations are presented in the continuum model, while a set of equivalentequations in Lattice Boltzmann model is introduced and solved numerically. The Nernest-Plank equation is employed to model the internal potential field to obtain more accurate results.Afterwards, different patterns for various numbers of circles have been proposed and thensolved. The studies have been carried out on different sets of one, two and three circle settings to gain a better understanding of the fluid flow and later study its mixing inside the channel. It has been noticed that eccentric placement of the circles and placing them in an oscillating pattern helps the mixing effect.

Keywords:

Electro-osmotic flow , Lattice Boltzmann method , PB method , NP method , Mixing efficiency , Micro-channels