Characterization of micro-Capsules Deformation in Branching Channels

TL;DR

This study models and analyzes the deformation and dynamics of micro-capsules in bifurcating microfluidic channels using advanced computational fluid dynamics techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive computational framework combining lattice Boltzmann and immersed boundary methods for simulating deformable capsules in complex microchannel geometries.

Findings

Capsule deformation depends on bifurcation sharpness and aperture angle.

Flow behavior varies with capsule stiffness and occlusion ratio.

The model accurately predicts capsule dynamics in branching channels.

Abstract

In this paper, the dynamic of inertial capsules into microfluidic bifurcations is studied. The fluid evolution is based on the solution of the BGK -- lattice Boltzmann scheme including a forcing term accounting for immersed geometries. The dynamic-Immersed Boundary forcing strategy is adopted for imposing no-slip boundary conditions on moving deformable or rigid structures, while, on fixed immersed geometries the Bouzidi-Firdaouss-Lallemand second-order bounce back technique is implemented. The proposed computational framework is employed to detail dynamics and deformation of rigid and deformable capsules traveling into a branching duct. This journey is characterized in terms of i) the capsule/bifurcation interaction depending on the sharpness of the branching channels junction; ii) daughter branches aperture angle; iii) occlusion ratio, the ratio between capsule size and main channel diameter; iv) flowing capsules stiffness; v) number of flowing particles.