Electro-osmotic and pressure-driven flow of viscoelastic fluids in microchannels: Analytical and semi-analytical solutions

In this work, we present a series of solutions for combined electro-osmotic and pressure-driven flows of viscoelastic fluids in microchannels. The solutions are semi-analytical, a feature made possible by the use of the Debye–Hückel approximation for the electrokinetic fields, thus restricted to cases with small electric double-layers, in which the distance between the microfluidic device walls is at least one order of magnitude larger than the electric double-layer thickness. To describe the complex fluid rheology, several viscoelastic differential constitutive models were used, namely, the simplified Phan-Thien–Tanner model with linear, quadratic or exponential kernel for the stress coefficient function, the Johnson-Segalman model, and the Giesekus model. The results obtained illustrate the effects of the Weissenberg number, the Johnson-Segalman slip parameter, the Giesekus mobility parameter, and the relative strengths of the electro-osmotic and pressure gradient-driven forcings on the dynamics of these viscoelastic flows.