Numerical and experimental investigation of flow around an obstacle in micro- and milli-fluidic channels
By: Jose Villanuevam and Ian Bucog
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Fatemeh Khalkhal
Flow around an obstacle has many applications including in roll-coating, inkjet printing, fiber spinning, and medical sciences such as understanding “stenosis,” an abnormal narrowing of a passage in the body. Flow instabilities can occur when the flow geometry and time scale of the experiments become comparable to the molecular size and relaxation time of polymer molecules in the complex fluids. The instabilities can generate imperfections in final products; for example, in roll-coating, these instabilities may compromise the quality of the films by forming wrinkles and causing uneven thickness.
Despite extensive work presented in the literature, there is a wide gap between numerical predictions and experimental observations, making it difficult to explain the involved mechanisms in flow behavior in different geometries. This shortcoming partially originates from the simplifying assumptions, without which numerical modeling is not feasible over the time-scale and geometrical dimensions of considerations. In this work, we attempt to bridge the gap between numerical predictions and experimental observations of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in flow around an obstacle. We pursue the following objectives:
1) Modeling flow of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in micro and milli-channels
2) Fabricating fluidic channels using low-cost fast prototyping techniques