Figure 5.

Effect of radius of curvature of the channel (R = 0.5–2 cm) on Dean velocity shown (a) at various axial velocities and (b) using the non-dimensional Dean number for devices with 150 µm × 150 µm cross section. The Dean velocity decreases as the radius of curvature increases at each inlet velocity. Increasing the Dean number (via axial velocity) for each device resulted in an increase in Dean velocity. A power function (V_De = aDe^b) fitted over the experimental results in (b) provided the constants of a = 0.090 and b = 1.95 with R² = 0.98. Numerical results based on our model (a = 0.096 and b = 1.92) and Ookawara’s model (a = 0.18 and b = 1.63) are also shown with a solid and a dashed line, respectively.