Inertial Migration of Neutrally Buoyant Spherical Particles in Square Channels at Moderate and High Reynolds Numbers

The inertial migration of particles in microchannel flows has been deeply investigated in the last two decades. In spite of numerous reports on the inertial focusing patterns in a square channel, the particle inertial focusing and longitudinal ordering processes remain unclear at high Reynolds numbers (>200) in square microchannels smaller than 100 µm in width. Thus, in this work, in situ visualization of particles flowing in square micro-channels at Reynolds numbers Re ranging from 5 to 280 has been conducted and their migration behaviors have been analyzed. The obtained results confirm that new equilibrium positions appear above a critical Re depending on the particle to channel size ratio and the particle volume fraction. It is also shown that, for a given channel length, an optimal Reynolds number can be identified, for which the ratio of particles located on equilibrium positions is maximal. Moreover, the longitudinal ordering process, i.e., the formation of trains of particles on equilibrium positions and the characterization of their length, has also been analyzed for the different flow conditions investigated in this study.