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Suspension of deformable particles in Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids in a microchannel

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Abstract

In this paper, we study a suspension of cells at a moderate volume fraction flowing in a microchannel filled with Newtonian or viscoelastic fluids and investigate the role of cell size, cell volume fraction, inertia, deformability, and fluid elasticity on the cell distribution. Our results suggest that the use of constant-viscosity viscoelastic fluid pushes the cells toward the channel centerline which can be used in microfluidic devices used for cell focusing such as cytometers. The cell-free layer increases which provides larger gap for separating rare cells in microfluidic devices. Furthermore, we show that the volumetric flow rate can be significantly enhanced with the addition of polymers in the suspending fluid. This effect enhances the processing speed which is of interest in designing microfluidic devices. This fundamental study can provide insight on the role of rheological properties of the fluid that can be tuned to control the motion of the cells for efficient design of microfluidic devices.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by a Grant from National Science Foundation [CBET-1705371].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Amir Hossein Raffiee, Sadegh Dabiri & Arezoo M. Ardekani

  2. Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    Sadegh Dabiri

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  1. Amir Hossein Raffiee
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Correspondence to Arezoo M. Ardekani.

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This article is part of the topical collection “Particle motion in non-Newtonian microfluidics” guest edited by Xiangchun Xuan and Gaetano D’Avino.

Appendix

Appendix

To check the mesh and the domain size independency of the computational results, we follow the method used in Doddi and Bagchi (2009), where the volumetric flow rate of the flow is investigated for various grid and domain sizes. Figure 18a shows the volumetric flow rate of the cell suspension in a Newtonian fluid at \(Re=100\), \(\phi =10\%\) and \(\frac{a}{W}=0.3\) for various La numbers with \(128\times 76\times 76\) and \(200\times 133\times 133\) grid points in x, y, and z directions, respectively. The maximum error between two different grid sizes is \(2.44\%\). Hence, our results indicate that the numerical simulation performed in this study is independent of the mesh sizes. The results for the domain independency of the simulation are also plotted in Fig. 18b. The variation of the volumetric flow rate at \(Re=100\), \(\phi =10\%\), and \(\frac{a}{W}=0.3\) for two different domain sizes (\(L_x=4W\) and 8W) in the x direction along which the periodic boundary condition is considered. The maximum error between two channel geometries is \(0.71\%\) that proves the independency of the numerical results against the computational domain size.

Fig. 18
figure 18

Volumetric flow rate at \(Re=100\), \(\phi =10\%\) and \(\frac{a}{W}=0.3\) a for \(128\times 76\times 76\) and \(200\times 133\times 133\) grid points and b for \(L_x=4W\) and 8W in x direction

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Raffiee, A.H., Dabiri, S. & Ardekani, A.M. Suspension of deformable particles in Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids in a microchannel. Microfluid Nanofluid 23, 22 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-018-2182-x

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