Numerical Investigation Effect of Geometry in Micro Droplet Generation

Understanding the micro-scale physical phenomena is important because of their widespread use in industry, medical sciences, biological sciences and pharmaceuticals. As microfluidics technologies have developed into smaller dimensions, the application of droplets in the microfluidics system, with the possibility of precise and effective control over the generation of microparticles, has been extensively studied. In this research, the generation of droplets in three types of miniature microchannels with different geometries has been studied numerically by finite element method using water as dispersed-fluid and oil as continuous-fluid. The equations governing the fluid flow are discretized using the Galerkin method and solved using Comsol software. The effect of microchannel geometrical changes as a passive method on droplet size and frequency was investigated and the results showed that the droplet diameter decreased with changes in the primary geometry and constant dispersion of each dispersed input constant. The frequency of droplet generation increases, which results in the production of large volumes of droplets over a given time interval in the two barrier geometries.