$\mu$-FlowNet: A Deep Learning Approach for Mapping Flow Fields in Irregular Microchannels Using an Attention-based U-Net Encoder-Decoder Architecture

TL;DR

This paper introduces $b$-FlowNet, a deep learning model based on an attention-enhanced U-Net architecture, for efficient mapping of fluid flow in irregular microchannels, outperforming conventional CFD methods.

Contribution

The study develops and compares U-Net based models, demonstrating that attention mechanisms significantly improve flow pattern prediction accuracy in microfluidics.

Findings

U-Net with attention mechanism achieves the highest dice score of 0.9317.

The model attains an IoU of 0.8731, outperforming other variants.

Attention-based U-Net shows superior structural similarity in flow mapping.

Abstract

In the complex domain of microfluidics systems, analysing fluid flow patterns through random-shaped circular microchannels is significantly challenging task. Conventional approach of solving such problems using computational fluid dynamics often incapable due to their intensive computational requirements and high simulation times. In this study, addressing these limitations, we introduce $\mu$-FlowNet, a deep learning framework based on the adaptable U-Net autoencoders. This model provides a data-driven approach that enhances the prediction and mapping of random-shaped circular microchannels and their corresponding fluid flow patterns. The datasets required for the training of the model is generated by performing extensive simulations using conventional approach of computational fluid dynamics methods. The datasets are then pre-processed and accessed the required spatial and temporal features that are essential for the training. We have trained three different models based on U-Net framework namely, standard U-Net, T-Net, and U-Net with attention mechanism to compare the prediction accuracy and loss. The accuracy of the $\mu$-FlowNet is compared using metrics of dice score and intersection over union and it shows that U-Net with attention mechanism shows the highest dice score and IoU of 0.9317 and 0.8731, respectively and shows the highest structural similarity as compared to standard U-Net and T-Net. This show that U-Net with attention mechanism serves best model to map the fluid flow pattern with random datasets on testing.