Materials Today: Proceedings 57 (2022) 1765–1769

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Numerical simulations for electro-osmotic flow of PTT fluids in diverging

microchannel
Mohit Trivedi, Saurabh Maurya, Neelkanth Nirmalkar ⇑
Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, Punjab 140001, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the current work, the electroosmotic coupled pressure driven flow through a diverging microchannel
Available online 7 January 2022 has been numerically investigated for the simplified Phan Thien Tanner (PTT) fluids. The Debye-Hückel
approximation is used for the linearization of electric potential distribution in the electric double layer
Keywords: and the Debye length has been kept fixed (jH = 20). The pressure and electroosmotic forces are coupled
Electroosmotic flows and by, U, the forcing ratio (the ratio of pressure to the electrokinetic gradient in the direction of flow),
PTT model which is varied in the range of
4  U  4. The viscoelastic fluid rheology has been modulated by the
Viscoelastic fluids pffiffiffi
combined effect of the characteristic Deborah number and the PTT parameter as 0.1  e De  5. The
Microfluidics
influence divergent angle (5°  a  15°) has also been demonstrated to analyze the role of channel geom-
etry on the resulting flow kinematics. The resulting variations in the flow field have been presented and
discussed in the form velocity vectors, surfaces and velocity profiles at the outlet of the channel.
Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Chemical
Engineering Conference 2021 (100 Glorious Years of Chemical Engineering & Technology).

1. Introduction
Due to the growing scope in the developments of micro-fluidic
devices in the field of environmental considerations and pollution
control for the water contamination measurement and microbial
activity detection and also for more general areas like reaction
engineering, healthcare, in the separation processes, the design of
flow kinematics and control for microfluidic devices has invoked
considerable research interest. Since the electroosmotic forcing
has the greater adoptability and applicability for such micro-
scale flows, a volume of studies have been accrued from past three
decades, a comprehensive overview of such studies has been
reported by the Bruss [1]. One of the classical studies on the
electro-chemical phenomena in flow systems has been reported
by Reuss [2] in 1809, here the electroosmotic flow through a chan-
nel is pushed by an external electric field applied between the inlet
and the exit with occurrence of an electric double layer. Theoreti-
cally, these layers of ions gets developed due to the imbalance of
the electric potential near channel walls by the interaction of the
dielectric charged surface and the nearby electrolyte. These layers
consist of zones or bands of highly concentrated ions/particles with
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: n.nirmalkar@iitrpr.ac.in (N. Nirmalkar).
an opposite charge to that of the charged walls. The charged ions
migrate with the electrolyte under the influence of the externally
applied electric potential, which mimics a flow field, and with
the conjunction of the viscous stresses present in the fluid, creates
a velocity gradient across the micro-channel. This phenomena has
been addressed for the Newtonian fluid behavior [3–9], as well as
for the non-Newtonian fluids in a great details by several studies
[10–15]. Burgreen and Nakache [3] have presented an analytical
study for micro rectangular channels which is limited to very thin
Debye length and small streaming potential, whereas Rice and
Whitehead[4] has reported similar results for cylindrical micro-
tubes. Arulanandam and Li[5] have performed a numerical study
using the Poisson-Boltzmann model equations. Dutta and Beskok
[6] have presented analytical findings on electro osmotic flow
through a 2D channel and presented the flow features as velocity
distribution, wall shear stress, vorticity, and also mass flow rate
etc. Das and Chakraborty[10] have presented analytical results
for flow of a non-Newtonian power-law fluid through a micro
channel. While Ferres et al. [13] have presented electrically and
pressure-driven flow of viscoelastic flow of sPTT fluids in a 2D
straight channel. Goswami et al.[15] have numerically modulated
an electrokinetic flow of power-law fluid through a deformable cir-
cular tube and velocity distribution and trapping phenomena. A
special category of the non-Newtonian fluids is known as visco-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.12.432
2214-7853/Copyright Ó 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Chemical Engineering Conference 2021 (100 Glorious Years of Chemical
Engineering & Technology).
M. Trivedi, S. Maurya and N. Nirmalkar
elastic fluids, which have both elastic and viscous nature. The PTT
fluids [16,17] (Phan-Thien-Tanner fluids) are classified in a subcat-
egory of visco-elastic fluids, based on the Lodge-Yamamoto net-
work theory. Here the visco-plastic material is assumed to be
made-up of network of polymer chains which are assumed to
behave like springs connected with nodes. This model assumes
that the flow occurs due to the relative motion of these nodes. They
can mimic polymers melts, viscous gels, and other complex and
structured fluids. The rheological properties depicted by the PPT
model can be modulated by controlling the fluid extensibility, e
and The Deborah number, De, which signifies the relaxation time
of the visco-elastic fluid. Although, the electrical and rheological
properties are discussed in some selective studies[10,15], the geo-
metrical aspects, though having numerous applications, have not
been investigated in conjunction with the visco-elastic rheology.
Therefore he present study is concerned with the effect of the
channel geometry (a) in addition to the fluid rheology and the forc-
ing ratio of electroosmotic and pressure gradient on the resultant
flow field and velocity profile in a diverging micro-channel.
2. Problem description and numerical scheme
The electroosmotic flow aided with the pressure gradient has
been considered for a charged microchannel with a charge density,
qe (Fig. 1) scaling at a height 2H and length l = 40H and symmetri-
cally diverging by an angle, a. The flow field is considered to be
invariant with the z- direction, therefore the flow has been consid-
ered to be 2-D (i.e. in  , and y), steady, and laminar. Since the flow
field has been found to be symmetric along the x-z plane, only half
(y  0) of the domain is considered here for the numerical study. As
stated earlier that, due to the interaction of the charged channel
surface (negative) and the counter charged ions (positive) present
in the electrolyte, the negatively charged surfaces pull the positive
electrolyte ions towards them and the co-ions (negative) majorly
remain closed to the core of the flow. It has also been considered
that the concentration of such ions is very low in the solution
(i.e., dilute electrolyte). Therefore, the bulk of the fluid remain neu-
tral and it forms an extremely thin fixed monolayer near the chan-
nel walls, following by a relatively wider and convective layer of
counter-charged ions. Together these layers form the so-called
the electric double layer or EDL. The thickness of which has been
approximated by kD = 1/j.
2.1. Governing equations, and assumptions:
The standard partial differential equations describing the cur-
rent pressure driven electroosmotic flow are the continuity equa-
tion and the modified Cauchy’s momentum equation given by Eq.
(1) and Eq. (2) respectively.
r:u ¼ 0 ð1Þ

rp þ r:s þ qe E ¼ 0 ð2Þ
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of diverging flow channel.
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Materials Today: Proceedings 57 (2022) 1765–1769
Where u, p and s are the velocity vector, pressure and the poly-
meric tensor respectively. The electrokinetic force has been intro-
duced as a body force term in the Cauchy’s equation with the net
charge density, qe, and applied electric field, E. The constitutive
equation of the PTT model [16,17] has been given by:
f ðskk Þs þ ksr ¼ 2gD ð3Þ
Where g is the polymeric viscosity coefficient, k is the relax-
ation time of the viscoelastic fluid andD ¼ ðruT þ ruÞ=2 is the rate
of deformation tensor, the f (skk ) is called the stress coefficient and
can be defined as:
f ðskk Þ ¼ 1 þ ðek=gÞskk ð4Þ
Where, skk denotes the trace of the extra stress tensor and l is
known as the PTT parameter. It governs the elongational velocity of
the PTT fluid. The sr is the upper convective derivative of the poly-
meric tensor and can be defined as:
Ds
sr ¼
ruT :s
s:ru ð5Þ
Dt
The potential field developed within the EDL can be estimated
by the Poisson-Boltzmann equation:
qe
r2 w ¼
ð6Þ

Where w is the electric potential field and e is the relative per-
mittivity of the fluid, which has been considered constant in the
present work.
qe ¼
2no ezsinhðezw=kB TÞ ð7Þ
Where, no is the ionic number concentration, (m
3), e is the ele-
mentary charge (C), z is the ionic valency, T is the absolute temper-
ature (K), and kB is the Boltzmann constant.
If D//l  f/kD, where D/ is the potential difference due to the
applied current imposed on the channel, the charge distribution
becomes independent of the externally applied electric field, hence
the potential field will only have significant gradients in the y-
direction. Furthermore, since for the EOF, the magnitude of the
flow velocities is small, the flow will also have negligible effect
on this charge distribution. Thus it is only depends on the wall zeta
potential f.
For low values of zeta potential the EDL thickness, kD is very
small. Thus for small values of ezf/kBT, the Eq, 7 can be rewritten
as:
qe ¼
2no ðe2 z2 w=kB TÞ ð8Þ
It is known as the Debye-Hückel approximation [19] and is
adopted in the current work combining Eq. (8) into Eq. (7) and con-
sidering all electrokinetic model assumptions as stated above.
r2 w ¼ @ 2 w=@y2 ¼ jw ð9Þ
 
Where j ¼ 2no e2 z2 =ðkB T Þ, is known as the Debye-Hückel
parameter.
The length and the velocity scale have been taken as H and Ush
respectively, where Ush = - (fEx)/g is the Helmholtz-Smoluchowski
velocity. The Deborah number is defined by, De = kUsh/kD, and the
forcing parameter, C has been defined as C = - (H2/(f))(p, x/Ex),
where p, x and Ex are the pressure and electric field gradients in
the flow direction.
The electric field Ex has been imposed across the inlet and outlet
of the microchannel inducing the elecroosmotic flow (EOF) in the
micro channel. A pressure difference has also be applied across
the both inlet and outlet of the channel aiding or countering the
EOF. A no-slip flow condition and a uniform zeta potential f has
been applied to the both walls, while the symmetric boundary
M. Trivedi, S. Maurya and N. Nirmalkar
condition and the no-flux has been imposed at the plane of sym-
metry for both the flow field and potential field respectively.
2.2. Numerical solution scheme:
A finite volume method based solver OpenFOAM in conjunction
with the RheoTool toolbox (version 5) [18] has been used to solve
the governing and constitutive equations (i.e., Eq. 1–5 and 9) for
the electric potential and the velocity field. The Debye- Hückel
model has been used for formulating the electric properties, and
PTT model has been used for the constitutive relation. The diver-
gence of the velocity, electric potential, polymeric and the confor-
mation tensors has been calculated using Convergent and
Universally Bounded Interpolation Scheme for Treatment of Advec-
tion scheme (CUBISTA). A second-order accurate Gauss linear
orthogonal interpolation scheme and Gauss liner interpolation
schemes have been used to solve the diffusive and convective
terms respectively, for both velocity and pressure fields. The result-
ing liner system of equations for the pressure velocity and electric
field fields are solved using the preconditioned biconjugate gradi-
Fig. 2. Comparison of the velocity profiles at the outlet of the channel at different
value of the forcing ratio, U, and jH = 20, present results are denoted by lines while
the symbols corresponds to Afonso et al [11].
Fig. 3. Velocity vectors and contours of dimensionless velocity magnitude for (a) U = 4 and (a) U =
4, at
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Materials Today: Proceedings 57 (2022) 1765–1769
ent solver (PBiCG). The velocity and pressure fields are coupled
by the SIMPLE method. The relative convergence criteria of the
velocity, electric potential and the pressure fields has been set as
10-10. The grid independence study has also been performed to
assure the reliability and reproducibility of the results. Three
meshes G1, G2 and G3 of progressively increasing number of
domain elements i.e., 22,000, 48,000 and 86,000 respectively have
been generated and resultant of the velocity fields have been com-
pared for the critical values of the flow and electrokinetic parame-
ters and the G2 has been found to be optimum for the current
study.
3. Results and discussion:
In order to ascertain the accuracy of the current numerical
scheme, it is preferable to perform some benchmark comparisons
thus the velocity profiles for a straight channel (a = 0°) has been
pffiffiffi
compared for jH = 20 and e De = 4 with Afonso et al. [11], and
presented in the Fig. 2. The current results have been found to be
in good agreement with their analytical solutions. Fig. 3 shows
the velocity surface and vectors for the two extreme values of U,
for De = 5 and a = 15o. It can be deduced from these plots that when
the electroosmotic force and pressure are in unison (U = -4), the
flow is aided by these two forces and the velocity profiles are found
to be plug like and are maximum at the center plane, on the con-
trary, flow exhibits a weaker velocity field when the pressure
and electroosmotic forces are countering each other (U = 4). The
next plot (Fig. 4) shows the effect of the forcing ratio, U on the
pffiffiffi
velocity profile at the exit of the channel for e De = 5 and
a = 15°, it demonstrates that the maximum velocity in the channel
increases with the decrease in the forcing parameter for U 0, and
it significantly decreases as the value of the forcing parameter
increases for U > 0, underlying the determining role of the pressure
gradient in the flow control through the channel. U on the velocity
pffiffiffi
profile at the exit of the channel for e De = 5 and a = 15°, it
demonstrates that the maximum velocity in the channel increases
with the decrease in the forcing parameter for U  0, and it signif-
icantly decreases as the value of the forcing parameter increases
for U > 0, underlying the determining role of the pressure gradient
in the flow control through the channel.
Next, Fig. 5a and 5b show the variation in the velocity profiles
pffiffiffi
with the diverging angle (a) at the exit of the channel for e
pffiffiffi
e De = 5, and a = 15°.
M. Trivedi, S. Maurya and N. Nirmalkar Materials Today: Proceedings 57 (2022) 1765–1769

pffiffiffi
De = 5 for U = 4 and
4 respectively. At the maximum value of e
De. When the divergence angle is decreased the flow area
decreases and therefore the net force exerted by the pressure gra-
dient increases, for U > 0. Whereas when the pressure force is act-
ing in the opposite direction to the flow i.e., U  0, a flow a velocity
minimum can be observed at the center of the micro channel. In
the given condition as the diverging angle decreases an increase
in the pressure gradient is compensated by the electro osmotic
flow. Therefore the flow rate and velocity field at the channel exit
increases with the increasing value of the diverging angle, a and
the corresponding result demonstrate that increase in the diverg-
ing angle has a negative effect on the maximum velocity. Finally,
the effect of fluid rheology has been
introduced by the Deborah number, De and the PTT parameter,
pffiffiffi
e, together in the composite form of e De. Fig. 6a and 6b show the
pffiffiffi
influence of e De of the exit velocity profiles, for both extreme
values of the forcing ratio i.e. U = 4 and
4. Since it has been pre-
viously mentioned that the Deborah number, De and the PPT
Fig. 4. Variation of the outlet velocity profiles with different values of the forcing parameter, e have a direct relationship to the fluid relaxation time
pffiffiffi
ratio, U for e De = 5, and a = 15°. and the fluid extensibility respectively, thus as the relaxation time

pffiffiffi
Fig. 5. Variation of the outlet velocity profiles with three different values of diverging angle, a at (a) U = 4 and (b) U =
4 for e De = 5.

pffiffiffi
Fig. 6. Variation of the outlet velocity profiles with three different values of the fluid extensibility, e De, at (a) U = 4 and (b) U =
4 for a = 15o.
1768
M. Trivedi, S. Maurya and N. Nirmalkar
(i.e., De) increases, then at low velocity gradients the solid like nat-
ure of the fluid increases, this phenomena leads to the formation of
plug like velocity profile in the central region of the micro-channel.
Whereas since as the PTT parameter increases, the flow extensibil-
ity also increases irrespective of the value of forcing ratio, U. It
induces a shear-thinning behavior close to the walls of the micro
channel where the velocity gradients are highest, this phenomena
also facilitates fluid flow. Thus, it has been found that for a fixed
value of relaxation time (i.e., De) the flow extensibility (i.e., e)
has positive dependence on the velocity field and vice versa. All
in all, the overall fluid velocity significantly increases with the
increase in either Deborah number or the PTT parameter.
4. Conclusion
Numerical results for the flow of simplified PTT fluids through a
diverging microchannel have been presented here to delineate the
effect of the forcing parameter, U, the Deborah number and the PTT
pffiffiffi
parameter, e De, and the diverging angle, a. When the pressure
pffiffiffi
force is absent (i.e., U = 0), at the maximum e De, the flow is solely
driven by the electro-osmotic flow, therefore the velocity field
exhibits a plug-like profile. When the pressure difference is applied
in the flow direction, i.e., the pressure gradient is aiding the flow,
both forces the electro osmotic and the pressure force are in sync
thus the net flow rate as well as the maximum and average velocity
inside the microchannel increases. Moreover as the diverging angle
varies with fixed values of the remaining parameters, it can be
observed that the velocity and the flow rate moderately decrease
with the increasing the angle. Also for a given fixed angle for both
pffiffiffi
extreme values of U as the value of e De increases, concluding that
the De and e exhibit a positive influence on the velocity field. In
summary it has been observed that the electro-osmotic flow
through a micro channel facilitated by the increase in the, forcing
ratio, U, as well as the values of the rheological parameters i.e.,
De and e, while it exhibits a moderate inverse dependence with
angle of divergence of channel, a.
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Materials Today: Proceedings 57 (2022) 1765–1769
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Mohit Trivedi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation,
Data curation, Writing – original draft. Saurabh Maurya: . Neelka-
nth Nirmalkar: Writing – original draft, Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
Authors would like to acknowledge DST Inspire scheme DST/
INSPIRE/04/2016/001163 under DST and Technology Innovation
Hub at the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, India.
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