Rotating microchannel flow velocity measurements using the stationary micro-PIV technique with application to lab-on-a-CD devices

Abstract

The measurement of microfluidic flows is an essential instrument to understand the governing physical mechanisms at small scales. This fact has motivated the adaptation of well-established “macroscale” experimental technics to deal with the specificities of microfluidic flows; a prominent example is the micro particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV) technique. In a different manner, the progress experienced by experimental techniques to measure flows in rotating frames has been more limited, with most studies concerned with macroscale turbomachinery applications. It turns out that the scale reduction in this field establishes a new and important flow class, known as centrigually-driven microfluidics, with application to lab-on-a-CD devices. However, the experimental characterization of rotating microflows has been, so far, limited to bulk flow measurements and/or visualization practices. For that reason, in this work, we propose extending the stationary micro-PIV technique to undertake quantitative, whole-field, velocity measurements inside rotating microchannel flow platforms. For this task, actual lab-on-a-CD prototypes are used. This work develops in two parts. First, we describe the most relevant changes in the micro-PIV equipment viewing the introduction of the test section rotation, namely: (i) hardware changes related to the micro-PIV/CD synchronization and (ii) software changes aiming at the preservation of the velocity measurement accuracy, through the removal of the circumferential velocity component. While this last step follows a well-known methodology, called image de-rotation, we propose tackling it in a new and automated fashion by means of the image registration method, whose implementation and advantages are explained in detail here. The second part of this work evaluates the capabilities of the modified micro-PIV technique by critically assessing the results of preliminary tests undertaken in dynamical regimes where rotation is dominant. Here, we present for the first time velocity profile measurements of centrifugally-driven microchannel flows, which display marked structural differences from classical stationary pressure-driven flows. The quality of these experimental profiles is further examined through comparisons with computational fluid dynamics simulations, based on the lattice Boltzmann method. Overall, this study indicates the effectiveness of the proposed micro-PIV system, which is able to accurately capture the most relevant physical features of rotating microfluidic flows over regions sufficiently far away from the walls. On the other hand, inside the boundary layers, the present micro-PIV measurements remain difficult to execute; the reasons for this limitation are discussed and clearly identified in the present preliminary studies, which pave the way for future studies in the field.