TY - JOUR
T1 - Engineering the Flow of Liquid Two-Phase Systems by Passive Noise Control
AU - Zhang, Zeyi
AU - Kong, Tiantian
AU - Zhou, Chunmei
AU - Wang, Liqiu
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Physical Society.
PY - 2018/2/28
Y1 - 2018/2/28
N2 - We investigate a passive noise-control approach to engineering the two-phase flow in a microfluidic coflow system. The presence or absence of the jet breakup is studied for two immiscible oil phases, in a straight microchannel (referred to as the J device in the main text), an expansion microchannel (the W device) and a microchannel with the expansion-contraction geometry (the S device), respectively. We show that the jet breaks into droplets, in the jetting regime and the dripping regime (also referred to as the widening-jetting regime) for the straight channel and expansion channel, respectively, while a stable long jet does not break for the expansion-contraction geometry. As the inner phase passes the expansion-contraction functional unit, the random noise on the interface is significantly reduced and the hydrodynamic instability is suppressed, for a range of experimental parameters including flow rates, device geometry, liquid viscosity, and interfacial tension. We further present scale-up devices with multiple noise-control units and achieve decimeter-long yet stable jets. Our simple, effective, and robust noise-control approach can benefit microfluidic applications such as microfiber fabrication, interface chemical reaction, and on-chip distance transportation.
AB - We investigate a passive noise-control approach to engineering the two-phase flow in a microfluidic coflow system. The presence or absence of the jet breakup is studied for two immiscible oil phases, in a straight microchannel (referred to as the J device in the main text), an expansion microchannel (the W device) and a microchannel with the expansion-contraction geometry (the S device), respectively. We show that the jet breaks into droplets, in the jetting regime and the dripping regime (also referred to as the widening-jetting regime) for the straight channel and expansion channel, respectively, while a stable long jet does not break for the expansion-contraction geometry. As the inner phase passes the expansion-contraction functional unit, the random noise on the interface is significantly reduced and the hydrodynamic instability is suppressed, for a range of experimental parameters including flow rates, device geometry, liquid viscosity, and interfacial tension. We further present scale-up devices with multiple noise-control units and achieve decimeter-long yet stable jets. Our simple, effective, and robust noise-control approach can benefit microfluidic applications such as microfiber fabrication, interface chemical reaction, and on-chip distance transportation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85043487559&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.024036
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.024036
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85043487559
SN - 2331-7019
VL - 9
JO - Physical Review Applied
JF - Physical Review Applied
IS - 2
M1 - 024036
ER -