CHAOTIC MIXING IN THE ENHANCED MIXING SIMULATOR

The mixing performance of an experimental device-the enhanced mixing s imulator (EMS)-is studied in this paper. In this device, the Couette f low is perturbed laterally, so that uniform and quick mixing can be ac hieved. Numerical simulation of the mixing in EMS flows is performed, which shows good agreement with the experimental results. Spline inter polation and advanced integration techniques are used in particle trac king, so that accurate results are obtained at low costs. Poincare sec tions are used to study the long-term mixing behavior. The uniformity of the simulated mixture is evaluated using statistical approaches-the variation coefficient and the Kolmogorov test. The Kolmogorov test is adequately implemented for our purpose and incorporated with efficien t sorting algorithms. The mixing rate is determined from the time evol ution of uniformity during mixing. It is also shown that although the Lyapunov exponent can identify chaos, it does not measure the mixing r ate. Optimal design of the EMS is discussed.