Physico-chemical simulation and analysis for the development of 3D microfluidic devices

• Grant number: 21/05931-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Transport Phenomena
• Principal Investigator: Mario Ricardo Gongora Rubio
• Grantee: Edgar Andres Patino Narino
• Host Institution: Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas S/A (IPT). Secretaria de Desenvolvimento Econômico (São Paulo - Estado). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 17/50343-2 - Institutional development plan in the area of digital transformation: advanced manufacturing and smart and sustainable cities (PDIp), AP.PDIP

Abstract

Miniaturization and laminar flow in Lab-On-a-Chip (LOC) allows better control of the process, reducing the consumption of reagents and the time of analysis. Thus, these have an outstanding application in chemical and biological analysis devices. An important stage of LOC systems is the control of processes with heat exchange, emulsions, and chemical reactions in micro-devices (eg., micro-mixer and micro-heat exchangers). For the design, planning, and manufacture of microfluidic devices, analytical and numerical methods are used. However, these are usually limited by the need for high geometric resolution and complex time scales, due to the physical phenomena involved. Thereby, Lagrangian methods without mesh have stood out as a new alternative for simulating LOC with the flow of fluids, emulsions, and drops/bubbles. These methods make it possible to naturally integrate the multi-scale and multi-physical characteristics of the micro and nano-scale in the fluid, in phenomena such as heat exchange, capillarity, multiphase interactions, reaction-diffusion, and advection. Furthermore, meshless methods are easily implemented to use computational processing in parallel, decreasing the computational cost. An alternative to computational processing is the parallel programming tools on General Purpose Graphics Processing (GPGPU) branded by NVIDIA.The objective of this work is to numerically develop the implementation of the meshfree method to simulate cases with the interaction of different liquids and gases in the presence of physico-chemical processes, in 3D micro-fluidic devices. The simulator will be validated using analytical and experimental results. The resulting software will have parallel GPGPU programming using the CUDA-C language. Finally, a specific simulator for micro-fluidic devices will be developed, and prototypes for their validation and study will be manufactured at the Technological Research Institute (IPT), for the analysis of physico-chemical processes, mainly applied in micro-fluidic devices. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

PATINO-NARINO, EDGAR A.; GALVIS, ANDRES F.; PAVANELLO, RENATO; GONGORA-RUBIO, MARIO R.. Modeling of co-axial bubbles coalescence under moderate Reynolds regimes: A Bi-phase SPH approach. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIPHASE FLOW, v. 162, p. 35-pg., 2023-02-16. (13/08293-7, 21/05931-9, 17/50343-2)