The Influence of Electroosmotic Flow on the Von Kármán Vortex Street in the Wake of a Cylinder Located in a Microchannel

The von Kármán vortex street is a flow instability that is observed in the wake of a blunt body if a certain (cylinder) Reynolds number is exceeded. It is one of the classical problems in fluid mechanics and a vast amount of research has been dedicated to the investigation of the fundamentals of this phenomenon. The present study is concerned with the numerical simulation of the flow in a microchannel having a cylinder located in its channel center. A pressure driven flow is induced in the channel described by the channel Reynolds number. The cylinder is subjected to an externally-applied electric field that causes electroosmosis in the electrical double layer which is present around the cylinder surface. In this setup, two distinctions to the classical von Kármán vortex street can be noted. On the one hand, the presence of the microchannel walls confines the flow field in lateral direction. On the other hand, the electroosmotic slip velocity impacts the flow topology in the vicinity of the cylinder and, thus, may have an impact on the formation and the periodic nature of the von Kármán vortex street. Various numerical simulations are performed to investigate the influence of the cylinder-diameter-to-channel-width ratio and the direction of the electrical field.