Numerical analysis of wall slip effects on flow of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in macro and micro contraction channels

We performed numerical simulation to investigate the effects of wall slip on flow behaviors of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in macro and micro contraction channels. The results show that the wall slip introduces different vortex growth for the flow in micro channel as compared to that in macro channel, which are qualitatively in agreement with experimental results. The effects of slip on bulk flow behaviors depend on rheological property of the fluid. For Newtonian fluid, the wall slip always reduces the vortex length, while for non-Newtonian fluid, the strength of the slip determines whether the vortex length is reduced or increased. Analyses on the velocity and stress fields confirm the channel size dependent phenomena, such as the reduction of wall shear stress with the decrease in channel size. With the increase in average shear rate, the Newtonian fluid shows the reduction of wall shear stress that increases in the same trend with slip velocity-wall shear stress function, while for non-Newtonian fluid, the effect of the slip is suppressed by shear thinning effect and, therefore, the reduction of wall shear stress is less sensitive to the change in average shear rate and slip velocity-wall shear stress function.