The NNIN/C at the University of Michigan will be hosting a presentation on ” Multiphase CFD for Droplet Based Microfluidics”, which will be broadcast live as a web based seminar.

Event Information

Topic: Multiphase CFD for Droplet Based Microfluidics

Date: January 29th, 2012

Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT.

To register: Please visit http://lnf.umich.edu/nnin-at-michigan/index.php/multiphase-cfd

Presenter:

Amar S. Basu, Assistant Professor, Department Of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State University.

Abstract: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) will play an important role in multiphase microfluidics, an emerging class of devices which use water-in oil droplets as containers for biochemical reactions. As life sciences research grows increasingly dependent on high throughput assays, droplets can provide small volumes (nL-pL) and high throughputs (>1000 assays/second) needed for single cell biology, proteomics, genomics, and drug discovery. From a modeling standpoint, droplet-based fluidics can be considerably more complex than conventional microfluidics as it involves coupled interactions between two immiscible phases. Surface tension, Laplace pressure, shape deformation, and other phenomena acting in cohort with the standard flow equations results in models which are difficult to solve analytically, and may have nonintuitive results. This webinar will begin with an overview of multiphase CFD and how it can be used to simulate fundamental unit operations in droplet systems such as drop generation, splitting, merging, and mixing. It will then discuss modeling of advanced phenomena including our group’s work in particle concentration in droplets using internal microvortices, trapping droplets using focused lasers, and sorting drops using interfacial tension gradients.