Diodicity Mechanism Analysis of a Tesla Microvalve

Abstract

Microvalve is one of the most important components in microfluidic systems and micropumps. In this paper, the three-dimensional
incompressible flow through a Tesla microvalve is simulated using FLUENT computational fluid dynamic package. The flow is laminar and
SIMPLE algorithm is used. The second-order upwind method is implemented for descretizing convective terms. The velocity and pressure fields
are considered in intermediate symmetric plane. The numerical analyses reveal that the mechanism of diodicity occurs at the T-junction and side
channel. If inlet and outlet channels are eliminated, diodicity can be increased by 2. Pressure field analysis shows that the pressure drop is much
severe at the junction of the reverse flow compared to the forward flow. The obtained numerical results are compared with those of experimental
and a good agreement between them is noticed.