Electro-osmotic flow of a second-grade fluid in a porous microchannel subject to an AC electric field

Studies on electro-osmotic flows of various types of fluids in microchannel are of great importance owing to their multifold applications in the transport of liquids, particularly when the ionized liquid flows with respect to a charged surface in the presence of an external electric field. In the case of viscoelastic fluids, the volumetric flow rate differs significantly from that of Newtonian fluids, even when the flow takes place under the same pressure gradient and the same electric field. With this end in view, this paper is devoted to a study concerning the flow pattern of an electro-osmotic flow in a porous microchannel, which is under the action of an alternating electric field. The influence of various rheological and electro-osmotic parameters, e.g., the Reynolds number, Debye-Huckel parameter, shape factor and fluid viscoelasticity on the kinematics of the fluid, has been investigated for a secondgrade viscoelastic fluid. The problem is first treated by using analytical methods, but the quantitative estimates are obtained numerically with the help of the software MATHEMATICA. The results presented here are applicable to the cases where the channel height is much greater than the thickness of the electrical double layer comprising the Stern and diffuse layers. The study reveals that a larger value of the Debye-Huckel parameter creates sharper profile near the wall and also that the velocity of electro-osmotic flow increases as the permeability of the porous microchannel is enhanced. The study further shows that the electro-osmotic flow dominates at lower values of Reynolds number. The results presented here will be quite useful to validate the observations of experimental investigations on the characteristics of electro-osmotic flows and also the results of complex numerical models that are necessary to deal with more realistic situations, where electro-osmotic flows come into the picture, as in blood flow in the micro-circulatory system subject to an electric field.