TY - JOUR
T1 - Calculating the motion of highly confined, arbitrary-shaped particles in Hele–Shaw channels
AU - Bet, Bram
AU - Georgiev, Rumen
AU - Uspal, William
AU - Eral, Huseyin Burak
AU - van Roij, René
AU - Samin, Sela
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - We combine theory and numerical calculations to accurately predict the motion of anisotropic particles in shallow microfluidic channels, in which the particles are strongly confined in the vertical direction. We formulate an effective quasi-two-dimensional description of the Stokes flow around the particle via the Brinkman equation, which can be solved in a time that is two orders of magnitude faster than the three-dimensional problem. The computational speedup enables us to calculate the full trajectories of particles in the channel. To validate our scheme, we study the motion of dumbbell-shaped particles that are produced in a microfluidic channel using ‘continuous-flow lithography’. Contrary to what was reported in earlier work (Uspal et al. in Nat Commun 4:2666, 2013), we find that the reorientation time of a dumbbell particle in an external flow exhibits a minimum as a function of its disk size ratio. This finding is in excellent agreement with new experiments, thus confirming the predictive power of our scheme.
AB - We combine theory and numerical calculations to accurately predict the motion of anisotropic particles in shallow microfluidic channels, in which the particles are strongly confined in the vertical direction. We formulate an effective quasi-two-dimensional description of the Stokes flow around the particle via the Brinkman equation, which can be solved in a time that is two orders of magnitude faster than the three-dimensional problem. The computational speedup enables us to calculate the full trajectories of particles in the channel. To validate our scheme, we study the motion of dumbbell-shaped particles that are produced in a microfluidic channel using ‘continuous-flow lithography’. Contrary to what was reported in earlier work (Uspal et al. in Nat Commun 4:2666, 2013), we find that the reorientation time of a dumbbell particle in an external flow exhibits a minimum as a function of its disk size ratio. This finding is in excellent agreement with new experiments, thus confirming the predictive power of our scheme.
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ef92f5f9-00ef-40bd-ac26-1f4f346cbf43
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049779317&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10404-018-2092-y
DO - 10.1007/s10404-018-2092-y
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049779317
SN - 1613-4982
VL - 22
JO - Microfluidics and Nanofluidics
JF - Microfluidics and Nanofluidics
IS - 8
M1 - 77
ER -