Transient Pressure-Driven Electroosmotic Flow through Elliptic Cross-Sectional Microchannels with Various Eccentricities

Abstract

The semi-analytical solution for transient electroosmotic flow through elliptic cylindrical microchannels is derived from the Navier-Stokes equations using the Laplace transform. The electroosmotic force expressed by the linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equation is considered the external force in the Navier-Stokes equations. The velocity field solution is obtained in the form of the Mathieu and modified Mathieu functions and it is capable of describing the flow behavior in the system when the boundary condition is either constant or varied. The fluid velocity is calculated numerically using the inverse Laplace transform in order to describe the transient behavior. Moreover, the flow rates and the relative errors on the flow rates are presented to investigate the effect of eccentricity of the elliptic cross-section. The investigation shows that, when the area of the channel cross-sections is fixed, the relative errors are less than 1% if the eccentricity is not greater than 0.5. As a result, an elliptic channel with the eccentricity not greater than 0.5 can be assumed to be circular when the solution is written in the form of trigonometric functions in order to avoid the difficulty in computing the Mathieu and modified Mathieu functions.