Experimental and Numerical Study of Slug-Flow Velocity Inside Microchannels Through In Situ Optical Monitoring.

Abstract

Miniaturization and reliable, real-time, non-invasive monitoring are essential for investigating microfluidic processes in Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) systems. Progress in this field is driven by three complementary approaches: analytical modeling, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, and experimental validation techniques. In this study, we present an on-chip experimental method for estimating the slug-flow velocity in microchannels through in situ optical monitoring. Slug flow involving two immiscible fluids was investigated under both liquid-liquid and gas-liquid conditions via an extensive experimental campaign. The measured velocities were used to determine the slug length and key dimensionless parameters, including the Reynolds number and Capillary number. A comparison with analytical models and CFD simulations revealed significant discrepancies, particularly in gas-liquid flows. These differences are mainly attributed to factors such as gas compressibility, pressure fluctuations, the presence of a liquid film, and leakage flows, all of which substantially affect flow dynamics. Notably, the percentage error in liquid-liquid flows was lower than that in gas-liquid flows, largely due to the incompressibility assumption inherent in the model. The high-frequency monitoring capability of the proposed method enables in situ mapping of evolving multiphase structures, offering valuable insights into slug-flow dynamics and transient phenomena that are often difficult to capture using conventional measurement techniques.