Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol.8, No.3, 203-207, 2000
Numerical investigation on mixing efficiency and exponential fluid stretching in chaotic mixing
The stretching and folding of fluid element during chaotic mixing field is studied using numerical method. The chaotic mixing process is caused by periodic secondary flow in a twisted curved pipe. Using the nonlinear discrete velocity field as the dynamical system, the present study connects the fluid particle's stretching along its trajectory in one period to a linearized time-varying variational equation. After numerical approximation of the variational equation, fluid stretching is calculated on the whole cross section. The stretching distribution shows an exponential fluid stretching and folding, which indicates an excellent mixing performance.