Microfluidic Droplet Generator, ANSYS Fluent Tutorial

Description

The present project investigates the performance of a microfluidic droplet generator device using ANSYS Fluent. Microfluidic droplet generator devices are specifically used in biomedical and bio-engineering fields. Clinicians or scientist are seeking after a method to analyze biological entities away from their natural habitat and in vitro.

This product is the second chapter of the VOF Multiphase Model Training Course.

However, separating biological entities is a sensitive task and must be done with extreme care. Due to the dimensions of these biological entities, the separation process is done using microfluidic separation devices. The microfluidic droplet generator is universally used to create droplets in which biological entities are trapped. These droplets can be analyzed away from the rest of the sample under a microscope.

The geometry is designed in ANSYS Design Modeler software.

In addition, an unstructured mesh grid is generated using ANSYS Meshing software. As a result, 10,441 cells were generated.

Microfluidic droplet generator Methodology

In this project, the multiphase VOF model is used to simulate the two phases of water and oil (buffers such as PBS can be used instead of water, and biological flows such as blood, etc. can be used instead of oil in real biological applications).

Surface tension modeling along wall adhesion is enabled to prevent the oil flow crawling toward the water inlet boundary and ensure the generation of detached droplets. Patching option is exploited to lessen the computational time needed for the oil flow to fill the respective inlet section.

Conclusion

In this project droplet generation inside a microfluidic device is investigated. By changing the flow inlet velocity for the two existing phases, the number and diameter of the droplets can be changed. This numerical simulation is beneficial for biological applications in which biological entities from the initial samples to be analyzed for further uses.