Rapid measurement of fluid viscosity using co-flowing in a co-axial microfluidic device

Abstract

This article presents a simple microfluidic method to measure the Newtonian fluid viscosity. This method is carried out in a co-axial microfluidic device. A stable liquid/liquid annular co-laminar flow in the co-axial microfluidic device has been realized, which can be described by Navier-Stokes equations. The viscosity of either fluid can be measured based on the equations when the viscosities of another fluid is known. Proper conditions to form stable annular co-laminar flow for the viscosity measurement were investigated. Several fluids were tested with viscosity ranging from 0.6 to 40 mPa s. The measured results fit very well with those measured by a commercial spinning digital viscometer. The novel method is highly controllable and reliable, and has the advantage of less time and material consumption, as well as easy fabrication of the device.

A comparative study on particle–fluid interactions in micro and nanofluids of aluminium oxide

“…Recent experimental studies suggest that nanofluids exhibit thermal conductivity enhancement within Maxwell's limit (Philip et al 2007;Timofeeva et al 2007;Eapen et al 2007;Shima et al 2009). The studies on viscosity measurements in nanofluids (Prasher et al 2006;Schmidt et al 2008;Ayela and Chevalier 2009;Kwak and Kim 2005;Abu-Nada 2009;Xie et al 2008;Dijke et al 2009;Lan et al 2009) show that the shear viscosity increase is much more dramatic than predicted by the Einstein model (Einstein 1906(Einstein , 1911Chen et al 2009). Such increases in viscosity are often attributed to aggregation of nanoparticles.…”

Changes in velocity profile according to blood viscosity in a microchannel

“…In order to overcome these technical limitations of conventional viscometers, several microfluidic devices have been proposed. [10][11][12][13] Nevertheless, these microfluidic platforms also require calibration procedures using a standard fluid as a reference. Moreover, additional procedures with intricate mathematical models are required to measure the viscosity of non-Newtonian fluids.…”

Microfluidic viscometers for shear rheology of complex fluids and biofluids

“…Another variation of the co-flowing stream viscometer is to use off-the-shelf cylindrical capillaries rather than lithographically fabricated devices, where a stable liquid/liquid axial annular flow is realized. 85 This method has only been tested for Newtonian fluids and can be prone to hydrodynamic instabilities with elastic fluids. 86 Co-flowing stream viscometers have been used to measure the shear rheology of a variety of complex fluids across a wide range of shear rates.…”