Numerical Investigation of Fluid Flow and Thermal Mixing in a Rotating Curved Micro-Channel with Rectangular Cross Section

In this study, fluid flow and thermal mixing in a rotating curved rectangular micro-channel have been investigated numerically. The continuity, momentum and energy equations have been solved by finite difference projection method using a program written in FORTRAN programming language. No-slip and adiabatic boundary conditions have been applied for channel walls and the numerical results have been validated by comparison of friction factor with previous results for stationary micro-channels in literature. The effect of flow parameters such as De and Ro numbers on the flow pattern has been studied and shows that these parameters can change the friction factor and mixing index by altering the flow pattern. Furthermore, the effect of aspect ratio of micro-channel cross section on the flow pattern, friction factor and mixing index has been studied and shows that the aspect ratio can affect the friction factor and mixing index. The results show that, there are distinguished optimal aspect ratios for low and high De numbers. Studying the variation of mixing index in the channel demonstrated the improvement of mixing index by increasing the channel length.