Electro-elastic flow instabilities of viscoelastic fluids in contraction/expansion micro-geometries

Electro-elastic instabilities in electro-osmotic contraction/expansion flows (EOF) of viscoelastic fluids are experimentally investigated in this work. Several microchannel configurations are used, including the cases with hyperbolic-shaped contractions followed by an abrupt expansion, or abrupt contractions followed by a hyperbolic-shaped expansion. Such cases were selected to assist in the understanding of the EOF instability mechanisms and at which conditions they occur. A reference Newtonian fluid was also used in the experiments, and a wide range of electric fields were imposed to drive the flow. Flow visualizations for a Newtonian fluid allowed to assess the impact of dielectrophoresis on the velocity field of the seeding particles. For each geometry, depending on the polymer concentration, the flow was found to be quasi-Newtonian below a critical electric potential difference, characterized by smooth parallel steady flow patterns in the upstream and downstream channels. Above the critical voltage difference two types of electro-elastic instabilities were found to occur, leading to an unsteady symmetric flow, and to time-dependent irregular flow.