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Droplet-based microfluidics offers significant advantages, such as high throughput and scalability, making platforms based on this technology ideal candidates for point-of-care (POC) testing and clinical diagnosis. However, the efficiency of co-encapsulation in droplets is suboptimal, limiting the applicability of such platforms for the biosensing applications. The homogeneity of the bioanalytes in the droplets is an unsolved problem. While there is extensive literature on the experimental setups and active methods used to increase the efficiency of such platforms, passive techniques have received less attention, and their fundamentals have not been fully explored. Here, we develop a novel... 

Some interface front patterns of falling droplets are studied via direct numerical solution of the full Navier-Stokes equations governing the system of droplets and the ambient surrounding media as a single-fluid model. We focus on the mutual interactions of the effects of characterizing nondimensional parameters on the formation and break-up of large cylindrical droplets. The investigation of droplet cross sections and deformation angles shows that for moderate values of the Atwood number, increasing the Eötvös number explicitly increases the deformation rate in formation and breakup phenomena. Otherwise, increasing the Ohnesorge number basically amplifies the viscous effects  

Symmetric T junctions have been used widely in microfluidics to generate equal-sized microdroplets, which are applicable in drug delivery systems. A newly proposed method for generating unequal-sized microdroplets at a T junction is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Asymmetric T junctions with branches of identical lengths and different cross sections are utilized for this aim. An equation for the critical breakup of droplets at asymmetric T junctions and one for determining the breakup point of droplets are developed. A good agreement was observed between the theories (present and previous) and the experiments  

Droplet-based microfluidics technologies hold great attention in a wide range of applications, including chemical analysis, drug screening, and food industries. This work aimed to describe the effects of different physical properties of the two immiscible phases on droplet formation in a flow-focusing microfluidic device and determining proper flow rates to form a droplet within the desired size range. A numerical model was developed to solve the governing equations of two-phase flow and the results were validated with previous experimental results. The results demonstrate different types of droplet formation regimes from dripping to jetting and different production rates of droplets as a... 

This study investigates an ethanol liquid jet subjected to combination of an air crossflow and a normal electric field. The results on the liquid jet trajectory and subsequent droplets flight paths are presented. The liquid jet trajectory was found as a function of two non-dimensional quantities; the liquid jet to the crossflow momentum ratio and the electroinertial number. The electroinertial number is defined as the ratio between the liquid jet specific momentum and the electric force. A correlation is introduced for the jet trajectory in low crossflow speeds and electric field intensities. The same two quantities control the detached droplets flight paths. Satellite droplets flight angles... 

The formation of water drops as a Newtonian fluid and formation of a shear-thinning non-Newtonian fluid, Carboxyl Methyl Cellulose (CMC) from a capillary into different bulk fluids are experimentally investigated. A high speed camera is used to visualize the images of the drops and an image-processing code employed to determine the drop properties from each image. It was found that the properties of the water drops when they are drooped into the liquids bulk fluids such as toluene and n-hexane are almost the same while they differed substantially when they were drooped into the air bulk fluid. It is shown that during the formation of water drop in all three kinds of bulk fluids, the drop... 

The behavior of low-speed liquid jets emerging from rectangular orifices into a quiescent air is studied numerically. After ejection, the rectangular cross-section transforms into an elliptical form along the jet and while axis-switching includes elliptical cross-sections only, the rectangular shape never establishes again. The optimum wavenumber, corresponding to the most dominant wave, is found to be greater in orifices with higher aspect ratios and, as a result, breakup length of the jet will be shorter. The breakup length decreases exponentially with the initial amplitude of disturbances. Moreover, it is observed that the form of final breakup leads to elimination of the satellite... 

Numerical simulations are performed to provide an in-depth insight into the effect of instabilities on liquid jets discharging from elliptical orifices. The axis-switching phenomenon and breakup are simulated and characterized under the effect of disturbances imposed at the nozzle exit. The simulations are based on the volume of fluid approach and an adaptive meshing. A range of orifice aspect ratios from 1 to 4 at the Rayleigh breakup regime is considered. The evolution of the jet cross section and axis switching under the influence of disturbances is compared with that of nonperturbed elliptical jets. It is found that the axis-switching repetition and breakup length exponentially decrease... 

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing is a novel technology used for fabricating high-resolution part features from a wide range of materials. Due to the multiphysics dynamics and the multiphase nature of the microdroplet formation in the EHD printers, modeling of this phenomenon is complicated. In this paper, the formation of a droplet in an EHD printer—under a pulsed electrical field—is simulated using a new numerical model which couples the fluid flow, the electric field distribution and the movement of the electric charges under dynamic and transient conditions. The level-set method is applied to the entire multiphysics domain in order to study the formation of the droplet. The presented... 

In this study, the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is used to investigate the deformation of two droplets within microfluidic T-junctions (MFTD). In order to increase the accuracy the two immiscible fluids are modeled using the He-Chen-Zhang model. First, this model is applied to ensure that the surface tension effect existing between the droplets and the continuous fluid is properly implemented in the model. Then the collision and merging of the two droplets within the intersection of a T-shaped microchannel is investigated. For generating droplet formation the effects of relevant dimensionless parameters such as the Reynolds, the Weber numbers as well as a collision parameter affecting the... 

Droplet microfluidic systems have attracted a large amount of research due to their numerous applications in biomedical micro-devices and drug discovery/delivery platforms. One of the most important problems in such systems is to investigate deformation, coalescence, and breakup of droplets within the channel. The present study demonstrates numerical simulation of a falling droplet subject to gravitational force in a channel with embedded rectangular obstacles. The lattice Boltzmann method incorporated using He–Chen–Zhang method for two phase flow is employed. Two rectangular obstacles with inverse aspect ratios are introduced to investigate the mechanism of breakup and deformation of the... 

In this study, droplet generation in a T-junction fluidic channel device was studied by using electrowetting actuation with the consideration of different droplet forming regimes. For this purpose, the finite element method (FEM) was used to solve the unsteady Naiver-Stokes equation. In addition, the level set method was applied to capture the interface between two phases. It was shown that there was a good agreement between obtained data and other work during the process of droplet generation in the absence of electrowetting actuation which results in the decrease in the size of the droplet with increasing the velocity ratios. In the shearing regime, the effectiveness of electrowetting on... 

Recently, a hybrid Lattice Boltzmann Level Set Method (LBLSM) for two-phase incompressible fluids with large density differences, in cases of negligible or a priori known pressure gradients, has been proposed. In the present work, the mentioned LBLSM method is extended to take into account pressure gradient effects. The lattice Boltzmann method is used for calculating velocities, the interface is captured by the level set function, and the surface tension is replaced by an equivalent body force. The method can be applied to simulate two-phase fluid flows with density ratios up to 1000 and viscosity ratios up to 100. In order to validate the method, the evolution and merging of rising bubbles... 

A hybrid lattice Boltzmann and level set method (LBLSM) for two-phase immiscible fluids with large density differences is proposed. The lattice Boltzmann method is used for calculating the velocities, the interface is captured by the level set function and the surface tension force is replaced by an equivalent force field. The method can be applied to simulate two-phase fluid flows with the density ratio up to 1000. In case of zero or known pressure gradient the method is completely explicit. In order to validate the method, several examples are solved and the results are in agreement with analytical or experimental results. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved  

This paper deals with investigations of droplet dynamics in rotating flows. In many previous studies droplet dynamics was analyzed in simple unidirectional flows. To fill this gap, the focus of this study is an overview on investigations of droplet dynamics in a complex rotating flow. A Lattice Boltzmann Method with high potential in simulation of two-phase unsteady flows is applied to simulate the physics of the problem in a lid-driven cavity. In spite of its simple geometry, there is a complex rotating flow field containing different vortices and shear regions. The Reynolds number based on the cavity length scale and the upper wall velocity, ReL, is considered to be 1000. We discuss here... 

The deformation and breakup dynamics of a compound ferrofluid droplet under shear flow and uniform magnetic field are numerically studied in this paper. Utilizing magnetic field provides the possibility to obtain better control over the compound droplet morphology and breakup in a simple shear flow. To solve the governing equations for interfaces motion and hydrodynamics, the conservative phase field lattice Boltzmann model is employed, and a finite difference approach is applied for calculating the magnetic field. To verify the accuracy of present simulations, the results are validated with those of four relevant benchmarks including liquid lens between two stratified fluids, three-phase... 

In this paper, a Lagrangian-extended finite-element (FE) method is presented in modeling large-plasticity deformations and contact problems. The technique is used to model arbitrary interfaces in two-dimensional (2D)/three-dimensional (3D) large deformations. The material interfaces are represented independent of the FE mesh and the process is accomplished by integrating enriched elements with a larger number of Gauss points, whose positions are fixed in the element. The large elasto-plastic deformation formulation is employed within the eXtended Finite-Element Method (X-FEM) framework to simulate the nonlinear behavior of materials. The interface between two bodies is modeled by using the... 

The present study is concerned with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of turbulent dispersion of immiscible liquids, namely, water–silicone oil and water–benzene through Kenics static mixers using the Eulerian–Eulerian and Eulerian–Lagrangian approaches of the ANSYS Fluent 16.0 software. To study the droplet size distribution (DSD), the Eulerian formulation incorporating a population balance model (PBM) was employed. For the Eulerian–Lagrangian approach, a discrete phase model (DPM) in conjunction with the Eulerian approach for continuous phase simulation was used to predict the residence time distribution (RTD) of droplets. In both approaches, a shear stress transport (SST)... 

Coronary angiography is a vital instrument to detect the prevailing of vascular diseases, and accurate vascular segmentation acts a crucial role for proper quantitative analysis of the vascular tree morphological features. Level set methods are popular for segmenting the coronary arteries, but their performance is related to suitable start-up and optimum setting of regulating parameters, essentially done manually. This research presents a novel fuzzy level set procedure with the objective of segmentation of the coronary artery tree in 2-D X-ray angiography as automatically. It is clever to clearly develop from the early segmentation with spatial fuzzy grouping. The adjusting parameters of... 

Ferrofluid has been used in many fields, such as microfluidics, droplet formation, and heat transfer, due to its potential to be attracted in the presence of a magnetic field. Droplet formation, itself, has many applications such as emulsions, 3D micro-printers, MEMS, and electro-sprays. In this study, the mechanism of ferrofluid droplet formation from the nozzle in the presence of an alternating magnetic field was investigated. The magnetic coil was fixed at different angles with respect to gravity and the effect of the alternating magnetic field and the angle of the magnetic coil axis with respect to gravity on the produced droplet volume, satellite droplet, and droplet formation frequency...