Numerical Investigation of the Fluid Mixing in a Microchannel with an Oscillating Stirrer and Prediction of the Behavior

The mixing effect was studied numerically by calculating the flows driven by oscillating stirrers in a microchannel. The effects of molecular diffusion and disturbance by the stirrer for mixing were examined. The mixing was simulated using the computational fluid dynamics method by an Ansys CFX. In this study, a time-averaged mixing index was used to estimate the mixing performance of a time-dependent flow. The results revealed that the mixer, using an oscillating stirrer, was much more enhanced and stabilized. Therefore, a Prediction of the behavior for an active micro-mixer with an oscillating stirrer was performed based on the Taguchi and Artificial Neural Network method in order to obtain a robust solution. The design parameters were selected as reduced frequency and Reynolds number.