Abstract
Experiments were conducted to investigate the flow characteristics of water through rectangular PDMS microchannels with a hydraulic diameter ranging from 66.67 to 200 ${\mu}m$. In the experiments, the flow rate and pressure drop across the microchannels were measured at steady states. The experimental results were compared with the predictions from the conventional laminar flow theory. A significant difference between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions was found. Experimental results indicate that the pressure gradient and flow friction in microchannels are higher than those from the conventional laminar flow theory. This may be attributed to the fact that there exists effect of surface roughness of the microchannels. In this study, a surface roughness model is implemented to interpret the experimental data. A good agreement between the experimental data and the numerical predictions with a surface roughness model were found.