Modeling, analysis and design of centrifugal force-driven transient filling flow into a circular microchannel

Recently, centrifugal pumping has been regarded as an excellent alternative control method for fluid flow inside microchannels. In this paper, we have first developed the physical modeling and carried out the analysis for the centrifugal force-driven transient filling flow into a circular microchannel. Two types of analytic solutions for the transient flow were obtained: (1) pseudostatic approximate solution and (2) exact solution. Analytic solutions include expressions for flow front advancement, detailed velocity profile and pressure distribution. The obtained analytic results show that the filling flow driven by centrifugal force is affected by two dimensionless parameters which combine fluid properties, channel geometry and processing condition of rotational speed. Effects of inertia, viscous and centrifugal forces were also discussed based on the parametric study. Furthermore, we have also successfully provided a simple and convenient analytic design tool for such microchannels, demonstrating two design application examples.