Slippage Effect on the Oscillatory Electroosmotic Flow of Power-Law Fluids in a Microchannel

Abstract

The oscillatory electroosmotic flow (OEOF) under the influence of the Navier slip condition in power law fluids through a microchannel is studied numerically. A time-dependent external electric field (AC) is suddenly imposed at the ends of the microchannel which induces the fluid motion. The continuity and momentum equations in the and direction for the flow field were simplified in the limit of the lubrication approximation theory (LAT), and then solved using a numerical scheme. The solution of the electric potential is based on the Debye-Hückel approximation which suggest that the surface potential is small, say, smaller than 0:025V and for a symmetric () electrolyte. Our results suggest that the velocity profiles across the channel-width are controlled by the following dimensionless parameters: the dimensionless slip length , the Womersley number, , the electrokinetic parameter, , defined as the ratio of the characteristic length scale to the Debye length, the parameter which represents the ratio of the Helmholtz-Smoluchowski velocity to the characteristic length scale and the flow behavior index, . Also, the results reveal that the velocity magnitude gets higher values as increases and become more and more nonuniform across the channel-width as the and are increased, so OEOF can be useful in micro-fluidic devices such as micro-mixers.