Modeling of Acoustic Streaming in Viscoelastic Fluids

Acoustic streaming is a promising way for transporting fluid or particles suspended in a fluid in lab-on-a-chip devices and microfluidics in general. In literature usually water is considered as the working medium. In this contribution we present a framework based on perturbation theory, which implements viscoelastic fluid behavior to the acoustic streaming effect expanding the applicability beyond simple Newtonian fluids. Numerical simulations were carried out by finite element analysis. As an example we consider the steady flow generated in a channel by acoustic streaming using the upper-convected Maxwell (UCM) model to describe the viscoelastic behavior.