Inertial migration of bidisperse suspensions flowing in microchannels: effect of particle diameters ratio

TL;DR

This study investigates how the size ratio of particles in bidisperse suspensions affects their inertial migration and ordering in microchannels, revealing behavior changes with varying particle size ratios.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the influence of particle size ratios on inertial migration and particle ordering in bidisperse suspensions, an area previously underexplored.

Findings

Particle behavior varies with size ratio (1.64 to 4.58).

Inertial migration patterns are affected by bidispersity.

Particle ordering into trains is influenced by size ratio.

Abstract

Up to date, inertial migration of particles in microflows has demonstrated a great potential for a wide range of applications. In particular, this phenomenon is used to achieve particle separation or sorting in a suspension. Recent works reported that the focusing mode of particles can be modified in a polydisperse suspension. Nevertheless, the impact of the particle sizes in a mixture on their inertial migration has been rarely studied up to now. Thus, we have investigated in this work the influence of bidispersity on the lateral migration of the particles towards equilibrium positions and on their longitudinal ordering into trains. Different changes in the particles behavior were observed when the ratio between the particle sizes (dp1/dp2) varied from 1.64 to 4.58.