Experiments were conducted in electroosmotic flow (EOF) with 0.005≤Re ≤ 0.039 on mixing enhancement in 3-D helical microchannels. Both inlet velocity and concentration distribution along the flow channel were measurement via £gPIV and £gLIF technique respectively. The experimental results showed that the helical channels can generate nearly fully chaotic flow and achieve the complete mixing in a relatively short channel with three different helical channels (3, 4, and 6 inlet channels), and the four-inlet channel found to have the best mixing efficiency. Finally, the mixing length was correlated into a form of £f/Dh = 2.8Pe0.35 within ¡Ó8% accuracy between the experiments and prediction.

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This thesis examines chaotic mixing in wavy-type channels and two-layer shallow water flow. For wavy-type channels, the equations of motion for vortices and fluid particles are derived assuming two-dimensional irrotational, incompressible flow. Instantaneous positions of the vortices and particles are determined using Lagrangian tracking, and are conformally mapped to the physical domain. Unsteady vortex motion is analysed, and vortex-induced chaotic mixing in the channels studied. The dynamics of mixing associated with the evolution of the separation bubble, and the invariant manifolds are examined. Mixing efficiencies of the different channel configurations are compared statistically. Fractal enhancement of productivity is identified in the study of auto-catalytic reaction in the wavy channel. For the two-layer shallow water model, an entropy-correction free Roe type two-layer shallow water solver is developed for a hyperbolic system with non-conservative products and source terms. The scheme is well balanced and satisfies the C-property such that smooth steady solutions are second order accurate. Numerical treatment of the wet-dry front of both layers and the loss of hyperbolicity are incorporated. The solver is tested rigorously on a number of 1D and 2D benchmark test cases. For 2D implementation, a dynamically adaptive quadtree grid generation system is adopted, giving results which are in excellent agreement with those on regular grids at a much lower cost. It is also shown that algebraic balancing cannot be applied directly to a two-layer shallow water flow due to the lack of simultaneous referencing for the still water position for both layers. The adaptive two-layer shallow water solver is applied successfully to flow in an idealised tidal channel and to tidal-driven flow in Tampa Bay, Florida. Finally, chaotic advection and particle mixing is studied for wind-induced recirculation in two-layer shallow water basins, as well as Tampa Bay, Florida.

Mixing in Stokes flows is notoriously difficult to achieve. With characteristic scales of the flows being too small for the turbulence to be present, and too large for the molecular diffusion to be significant, the chaotic advection presents almost the only mechanism that can lead to mixing. Unfortunately for mixing, the intrinsic symmetries of the flow create invariant surfaces that act as barriers to mixing. Thus, a key to efficient mixing is to add to the original (symmetric) flow a certain kind of perturbation that destroys those symmetries. In this dissertation, two ways of obtaining mixing in 3D near-integrable bounded time -dependent Stoke Flows are studied: resonances and separatrix crossings. First, I illustrate that the resonances between different components of the original flow and the perturbation may break the invariant surfaces, paving a way to the large-scale mixing. Theoretical estimations are compared against the results of numerical simulations, as well as 3D particle tracking velocimetry (3D-PTV) experimental results. Second, chaotic advection and mixing due to quasi-random jumps of the adiabatic invariant (AI) occurring when a streamline crosses the separatrix surfaces is studied. Analytical expressions for the change in the AI near the separatrix surfaces are derived and compared with numerical simulations. / Mechanical Engineering

Since it is difficult or impossible to generate turbulent flow in a highly viscous fluid or a microfluidic system, efficient mixing becomes a challenge. However, it is possible in a laminar flow to generate chaotic particle trajectories (well-known as chaotic advection), that can lead to effective mixing. This dissertation studies mixing in flows with the limiting case of zero Reynolds numbers that are called Stokes flows and illustrates the practical use of different theories, namely the topological chaos theory, the set-oriented analysis and lobe dynamics in the analysis, design and optimization of different laminar-flow mixing systems. In a recent development, the topological chaos theory has been used to explain the chaos built in the flow only based on the topology of boundary motions. Without considering any details of the fluid dynamics, this novel method uses the Thurston-Nielsen (TN) classification theorem to predict and describe the stretching of material lines both qualitatively and quantitatively. The practical application of this theory toward design and optimization of a viscous-flow mixer and the important role of periodic orbits as "ghost rods" are studied. The relationship between stretching of material lines (chaos) and the homogenization of a scalar (mixing) in chaotic Stokes flows is examined in this work. This study helps determining the extent to which the stretching can represent real mixing. Using a set-oriented approach to describe the stirring in the flow, invariance or leakiness of the Almost Invariant Sets (AIS) playing the role of ghost rods is found to be in a direct relationship with the rate of homogenization of a scalar. The mixing caused by these AIS and the variations of their structure are explained from the point of view of geometric mechanics using transport through lobes. These lobes are made of segments of invariant manifolds of the periodic points that are generators of the ghost rods. A variety of the concentration-based measures, the important parameters of their calculation, and the implicit effect of diffusion are described. The studies, measures and methods of this dissertation help in the evaluation and understanding of chaotic mixing systems in nature and in industrial applications. They provide theoretical and numerical grounds for selection of the appropriate mixing protocol and design and optimization of mixing systems, examples of which can be seen throughout the dissertation. / Ph. D.