Traditional fluid mechanics edifies the indifference between liquid and gas flows as long as certain similarity parameters – most prominently the Reynolds number – are matched. This may or may not be the case for flows in nano- or microdevices. The customary continuum, Navier-Stokes modelling is ordinarily applicable for both air and water flowing in macrodevices. Even for common fluids such as air or water, such modelling bound to fail at sufficiently small scales, but the onset for such failure is different for the two forms of matter. Moreover, when the no-slip, quasi-equilibrium Navier – Stokes system is no longer applicable, the alternative modelling schemes are different for gases and liquids. For dilute gases, statistical methods are applied and the Boltzmann equation is the cornerstone of such approaches. For liquid flows, the dense nature of the matter precludes the use of the kinetic theory of gases, and numerically intensive molecular dynamics simulations are the only alternative rooted in first principles. The present article discusses the above issues, emphasizing the differences between liquid and gas transport at the microscale and the physical phenomena unique to liquid flows in minute devices.

Geometry of the fluid container plays a key role in the shape of acoustic streaming patterns. Inadvertent vortices can be troublesome in some cases, but if treated properly, the problem turns into a very useful parameter in acoustic tweezing or micromixing applications. In this paper, the effects of sinusoidal boundaries of a microchannel on acoustic streaming patterns are studied. The results show that while top and bottom sinusoidal walls are vertically actuated at the resonance frequency of basic hypothetical rectangular microchannel, some repetitive acoustic streaming patterns are recognised in classifiable cases. Such patterns can never be produced in the rectangular geometry with flat boundaries. Relations between geometrical parameters and emerging acoustic streaming patterns lead us to propose formulas in order to predict more cases. Such results and formulations were not trivial at a glance.

The microscale deformation behaviour of the Al-4.5Cu-2Mg alloy has been studied to understand the influence of various processing routes and conditions, i.e. the gravity casting with and without grain refiner, the rheocast process and the strain induced melt activation (SIMA) process. The micromechanics based simulations have been carried out on the optical microstructures of the alloy by 2D representative volume elements (RVEs) employing two different boundary conditions. Microstructural morphology, such as the grain size, the shape and the volume fraction of α-Al and binary eutectic phases have a significant effect on the stress and strain distribution and the plastic strain localization of the alloy. It is found that the stress and strain distribution became more uniform with increasing the globularity of the α-Al grain and the α-Al phase volume fraction. The simulated RVEs also reveals that the eutectic phase carries more load, but least ductility with respect to the α-Al phase. The SIMA processed alloy contains more uniform stress distribution with less stress localization which ensures better mechanical property than the gravity cast, grain refined and rheocast alloy.