Lateral Capsule Migration in Microfluidic Channels

dc.contributor.advisorDimitrakopoulos, Panagiotisen_US
dc.contributor.authorWang, Yiyangen_US
dc.contributor.departmentChemical Engineeringen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2017-09-13T05:36:38Z
dc.date.available2017-09-13T05:36:38Z
dc.date.issued2017en_US
dc.description.abstractA capsule motion inside a microfluidic channel has attracted a lot of attention in recent decades owing to its important applications in industrial, pharmaceutical and physiological systems such as in cell sorting, targeted drug delivery and blood flow. In this dissertation, we computationally investigate an elastic capsule's lateral migration inside a constricted microfluidic device under Stokes flow conditions. We use the Membrane Spectral Boundary Element (MSBE) method to determine the capsule dynamics due to its high computational accuracy and versatility in dealing with complex solid geometries. In the bounded Poiseuille flow of the microfluidic constriction, a capsule, placed initially off-centered will migrate away from the wall and move toward the channel centerline. The capsule's lateral migration behavior is caused by the combination of the wall effects due to the existence of the channel boundary, the shear gradient generated by the non-linear velocity distribution of the flow, and the lift force created by the capsule deformation. We use a constricted device instead of a straight channel to do the simulations, because the capsule's lateral migration in a straight channel is too slow to be observed easily, while the existence of the converging connection of the constricted device increases the capsule's lateral velocity and thus facilitates its migration. The main goal of our research is to investigate the effects of the capsule's physical properties on its lateral migration behavior. We released various deformable capsules at different initial positions, membrane hardness, viscosity ratios, and capsule volumes inside the constricted channel and computed their deformation behavior and migration trajectories. Our results show that changing a capsule's viscosity ratio or the membrane hardness does not strongly affect the capsule's lateral migration due to the capsule's weak inner circulation. On the other hand, changing the capsule's initial position and capsule volume strongly affect its migration trajectories. Thus soft particles with different sizes can be separated and identified.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2610VS4F
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/19810
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEngineeringen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCapsulesen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledFluid dynamicsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLateral Migrationen_US
dc.titleLateral Capsule Migration in Microfluidic Channelsen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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