Use of diverging or converging arrangement of plates for the control of chaotic mixing in symmetric sinusoidal plate channels

This paper presents an experimental flow visualization study of the effect that the variation of converging or diverging angles plays in the flow field of a symmetric sinusoidal channel. The experiments were performed in a water tunnel and the visualization technique was laser illumination of seeded particles whose traces were captured using long time exposure photography. Geometrical parameters such as wave amplitude, wavelength and distance between plates were kept constant, while the Reynolds number and divergence or convergence angles were varied. It was found from the experiments that the divergence of the plates is a good way to promote chaotic mixing in channel flows, as the flow becomes more unstable for diverging channels. For the case of converging channels, the flow becomes very stable even for large values of the Reynolds number. These results were compared with those of a channel formed by a pair of sinusoidal parallel plates.