Study of peculiar behaviour of gas flow in microchannel with 90° bends

The most often found element of complex microchannel in microdevices is microchannel having 90° bend/bends. Study of the flow through these channels is needed to know the flow physics through it. In this article, the peculiar behaviour of gas flow through microchannel with 90° bends was investigated using experimental and numerical analysis within slip regime. Microchannel system of twenty channels having dimensions 1.03 × 393.96 × 25200 µm 3 with 90°bend at two places was fabricated on a silicon wafer. This channel system has a common inlet and outlet passage. Nitrogen gas was used as the working fluid. Experimental data through microchannel system was obtained in slip regime with pressure ratio ranging 1.30-1.55 covering range of Knudsen number from 0.0662 to 0.0805. Study of mass flow rate ratio variation in slip regime was performed. Further, flow separation near bend corners was studied using Ansys fluent 18.1 for three dimensional numerical simulations of isothermal gas flow in slip regime.