Pressure-drop studies of resistance components for integration into a SFM-based fluidic circuit

The design of swappable fluidic module (SFM) has the advantage that all components can be easily swapped. This paper reports a resistance component, which can be readily integrated into a SFM-based fluidic circuit for different applications. In this research, we designed and fabricated two basic modular fluidic components including channel and T-tube to transport the fluid with the pressure drops due to a continuous flow past a straight circular channel. From the electrohydraulic analogy, the hydraulic resistance for a uniform circular cross-section channel due to the viscous effect is therefore calculated and compared with the measured data. The measured results were reasonably close to the predictions with the maximum error within 9% in the measurements of pressure drop and hydraulic resistance.