ABSTRACT
We discover a nonlinear coupling between the hydrophobicity of a charged substrate and electrokinetic pumping in narrow fluidic confinements. Our analyses demonstrate that the effective electrokinetic transport in nanochannels may get massively amplified over a regime of bare surface potentials and may subsequently get attenuated beyond a threshold surface charging condition because of a complex interplay between reduced hydrodynamic resistance on account of the spontaneous inception of a less dense interfacial phase and ionic transport within the electrical double layer. We also show that the essential physics delineated by our mesoscopic model, when expressed in terms of a simple mathematical formula, agrees remarkably with that portrayed by molecular dynamics simulations. The nontrivial characteristics of the initial increment followed by a decrement of the effective zeta potential with a bare surface potential may open up the realm of hitherto-unexplored operating regimes of electrohydrodynamically actuated nanofluidic devices.
ABSTRACT
A comprehensive non-isothermal Lattice Boltzmann (LB) algorithm is proposed in this article to simulate the thermofluidic transport phenomena encountered in a direct-current (DC) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) micropump. Inside the pump, an electrically conducting fluid is transported through the microchannel by the action of an electromagnetic Lorentz force evolved out as a consequence of the interaction between applied electric and magnetic fields. The fluid flow and thermal characteristics of the MHD micropump depend on several factors such as the channel geometry, electromagnetic field strength and electrical property of the conducting fluid. An involved analysis is carried out following the LB technique to understand the significant influences of the aforementioned controlling parameters on the overall transport phenomena. In the LB framework, the hydrodynamics is simulated by a distribution function, which obeys a single scalar kinetic equation associated with an externally imposed electromagnetic force field. The thermal history is monitored by a separate temperature distribution function through another scalar kinetic equation incorporating the Joule heating effect. Agreement with analytical, experimental and other available numerical results is found to be quantitative.
Subject(s)
Hydrodynamics , Magnetics , Microfluidic Analytical Techniques , Models, Theoretical , Temperature , KineticsABSTRACT
In this paper, a lattice kinetic algorithm is presented to simulate nonisothermal magnetohydrodynamics in the low-Mach number incompressible limit. The flow and thermal fields are described by two separate distribution functions through respective scalar kinetic equations and the magnetic field is governed by a vector distribution function through a vector kinetic equation. The distribution functions are only coupled via the macroscopic density, momentum, magnetic field, and temperature computed at the lattice points. The novelty of the work is the computation of the thermal field in conjunction with the hydromagnetic fields in the lattice Boltzmann framework. A 9-bit two-dimensional (2D) lattice scheme is used for the numerical computation of the hydrodynamic and thermal fields, whereas the magnetic field is simulated in a 5-bit 2D lattice. Simulation of Hartmann flow in a channel provides excellent agreement with corresponding analytical results.
