Sharif Digital Repository

Identification and minimization of error sources are important issues in experimental investigations. Mainly in micro-scale problems, precise settings should be applied to high-tech test beds to reduce disturbance and induced motion. An experimental study is conducted to assess the role of induced forces and velocity fields in a particulate system used for particle identification and separation. Two main effects caused by disturbances are sampling errors and induced motion in the channel, either on fluid or dispersed phases. Different disturbance scenarios are implemented on the test bed and then the system response is reported. In order to assess induced motion as a result of applied... 

Magnetic convection heat transfer in a two-dimensional square cavity induced by magnetic field gradient is investigated numerically using a semi-implicit finite volume method. The side walls of the cavity are heated with different temperatures, the top and bottom walls are isolated, and a permanent magnet is located near the bottom wall. Thermal buoyancy-induced flow is neglected due to the nongravity condition on the plane of the cavity. Conditions for the different values of non-dimensional variables in a variety of ferrofluid properties and magnetic field parameters are studied. Based on this numerical analysis, a general correlation for the overall Nusselt number on the side walls is... 

In this paper, a one-dimensional numerical approach is used to study the effect of various parameters such as micro combustor diameter, mass flow rate and external convection heat transfer coefficient on the temperature and species mass fraction profiles. A premixed mixture of H2-Air with a multi-step chemistry (9 species and 19 reactions) is used and thermal conductivity of the mixture is considered as a function of species thermal conductivity and temperature by using a set of new relations. The transient gas phase energy and species conservation equations result in an Advection-Diffusion-Reaction system (A-D-R) that leads to two stiff systems of PDEs, which can not be solved by... 

An experimental investigation has been performed to realize thorough behavior of a vortex tube system. In this work attention has been focussed on the classification of the parameters affecting vortex tube operation. The effective parameters are divided into two different types, namely geometrical and thermo-physical ones. A reliable test rig has been designed and constructed to investigate the effect of geometrical parameters i.e. diameter and length of main tube, diameter of outlet orifice, shape of entrance nozzle. Thermo-physical parameters which have been designated and studied are inlet gas pressure, type of gas, cold gas mass ratio and moisture of inlet gas. The effects of these... 

HVAC systems that use heat-regenerated desiccant wheels to remove moisture can be energy-efficient alternatives to traditional systems. Site-specific conditions and differing application requirements must be understood and quantified before desiccant-assisted hybrid systems can be justified on economic grounds. Although a detailed analysis is generally required, a few key variables drive costs and benefits. When two or more of these key variables favor a hybrid system over a conventional system, then a detailed analysis of the benefits vs. costs of a hybrid desiccant system is appropriate  

During recent years centrifugal-based microfluidic devices known as Lab-on-a-CD have attracted a lot of attentions. Applications of these CD-based platforms are ubiquitous in numerous biological analyses and chemical syntheses. Mixing of different species in microscale is one of the essential operations in biochemical applications where this seemingly simple task remains a major obstruction. Application of centrifugal force, however, may significantly improve the flow agitation and mixing, especially when it is combined with the Coriolis force which acts perpendicular to centrifugal force. In this study, mixing process in minichambers located on a rotating platform under a periodic... 

During recent years centrifugal-based microfluidic devices known as Lab-on-a-CD have attracted a lot of attentions. Applications of these CD-based platforms are ubiquitous in numerous biological analyses and chemical syntheses. Mixing of different species in microscale is one of the essential operations in biochemical applications where this seemingly simple task remains a major obstruction. Application of centrifugal force, however, may significantly improve the flow agitation and mixing, especially when it is combined with the Coriolis force which acts perpendicular to centrifugal force. In this study, mixing process in minichambers located on a rotating platform under a periodic... 

The biomicrofluidic devices utilizing electrophoresis for sample manipulation are usually encountered with non-Newtonian behavior of working fluids. Hence, developing theoretical models capable of predicting the electrophoretic velocity of colloidal particles in non-Newtonian fluids is of high importance for accurate design and active control of these devices. The present investigation is dealing with the electrophoresis of a spherical particle in a biofluid obeying the Quemada rheological model. The sphere radius is considered to be significantly larger than the Debye length. Moreover, it is assumed that the particle zeta potential is small so that the Debye-Hückel linearization is... 

The brain is one of the vital organs in the body. The main cerebral distribution center of blood flow in the brain is the circle of Willis (CoW). In more than 50% of healthy brains and in more than 80% of dysfunctional ones, at least one artery of the circle of Willis is absent or underdeveloped. These variations reduce the collateral flow availability and increase the risk of stroke and transient ischemic attack in patients with atherosclerosis. Thus it is essential to simulate the circle of Willis and investigate the effects of stenosis. In this work the systemic arteries along with the circle of Willis are simulated using the finite volume method and one-dimensional equations of... 

A one dimensional model of the pulmonary arterial network along with systemic circulation was introduced to quantify the human pulmonary artery hemodynamics. A lumped parameter model of the right ventricle was used as the inlet boundary condition. A time varying elastance related the volume and pressure of the right ventricle was imposed in the model. By using a four element Windkessel model, blood flow rate throughout the right ventricle was in hand. An asymmetric structured tree was chosen as the outlet boundary conditions. Simulation was based on solving one-dimensional equations of conservation of mass and momentum by using finite volume method. Blood flow rate, pressure and velocity... 

The heat transfer enhancement of natural convection using an electrohydrodynamic technique inside a horizontal enclosure heated from below is studied numerically. The interactions between the electric field, flow field, and temperature field are investigated by computational fluid dynamics methods. The flow and temperature fields are affected by voltage applied to the wire electrodes. For different voltages and numbers of electrodes, it is noticed that the Nusselt number increases in all cases and the best enhancement is obtained at lower Rayleigh numbers. It is also shown that increasing the number of electrodes does not always cause an increase in the heat transfer enhancement. Actually,... 

The front part of a cell is divided to two regions called lamellum and lamellipodium (lamellipodial). This part plays an essential role for cell migration. Indeed, there are many protein filaments called actin in lamellum and lamellipodium, which induce the cell motion with polymerization in the leading edge of the cell. The actin filaments adhere to the extracellular matrix (ECM) by means of focal adhesions and they have contact by myosin motor proteins. The myosin motor proteins cause actin retrograde and anterograde flow exerted contractile stress on them. The focal adhesions exert frictional stress on the actin filaments. In this work, we developed a two-dimensional continuum model of... 

The F-actin network and cytosol in the lamellipodia of crawling cells flow in a centripetal pattern and spout-like form, respectively. We have numerically studied this two-phase flow in the realistic geometry of a moving keratocyte. Cytosol has been treated as a low viscosity Newtonian fluid flowing through the high viscosity porous medium of F-actin network. Other involved phenomena including myosin activity, adhesion friction, and interphase interaction are also discussed to provide an overall view of this problem. Adopting a two-phase coupled model by myosin concentration, we have found new accurate perspectives of acto-cytosolic flow and pressure fields, myosin distribution, as well as... 

The purpose of this study is to carry out a numerical investigation of injection type EHD pumps. To this end, the flow is considered laminar, steady and incompressible flow. The flow model is based on the assumptions that the fluid is Newtonian and the fluid properties are constant. The results show that all of the ions emitted from emitter are not collected by next collector electrode, but some of this injected ions move to the previous one, which causes back flow. Although this back flow is smaller than net pumping flow but it would reduce the net flow. Because of existence of this back flow, finding the optimum distance of electrodes from each other is necessary. This study shows that... 

Interaction between intracellular dynamics and extracellular matrix (ECM) generally occurred into very thin fragment of moving cell, namely lamellipodia, enables all movable cells to crawl on ECM. In fast-moving cells such as fish Keratocytes, Lamellipodia including most cell area finds a fan-like shape during migration, with a variety of aspect ratio function of fish type. In this work, our purpose is to present a novel and more complete two-dimensional continuum mathematical model of actomyosin-cytosolic two-phase flow of a self-deforming Keratocyte with circular spreaded to steady fan-like shape. In the new approach, in addition to the two-phase flow of the F-actin and cytosol, the... 

Micro-mixers are considered as vital components of Micro Total Analysis systems (μTAS). Major objective in the design of micro-mixers is achieving high mixing quality in short mixing times. In this paper, numerical simulation of some micro-mixer designs has been carried out to understand the detailed flow pattern and thereby to propose modifications for improving mixing efficiency. It is well known that inducing convection will provide turbulent like behavior with corresponding mixing enhancement. In micro systems to drive the flow, electro-osmotic force is usually used by introducing electrodes. In this work, mixing electrodes have been implemented to induce convection and eddies. This... 

Interaction between intracellular dynamics and extracellular matrix (ECM) generally occurred into very thin fragment of moving cell, namely lamellipodia, enables all movable cells to crawl on ECM. In fast-moving cells such as fish Keratocytes, Lamellipodia including most cell area finds a fan-like shape during migration, with a variety of aspect ratio function of fish type. In this work, our purpose is to present a novel and more complete two-dimensional continuum mathematical model of actomyosin-cytosolic two-phase flow of a self-deforming Keratocyte with circular spreaded to steady fan-like shape. In the new approach, in addition to the two-phase flow of the F-actin and cytosol, the... 

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the major causes of death in the world; atherosclerosis being one aspect. Carotid bifurcation is one of the sites that are vulnerable to this disease. Wall Shear Stress (WSS) is known to be responsible for the process of atherogenesis. In this study, we have simulated the blood flow for Newtonian and non-Newtonian, steady and unsteady, flow conditions in three idealistic and five realistic geometries. A risk factor has been presented based on the results of wall shear stress and, then, a relation was found between geometrical features and the wall shear stress risk factor. Our main conclusions are: 1) The non-Newtonian behavior of blood elevates the value... 

Despite extensive area of applications, simulation of complex wall bounded problems or any deformable boundary is still a challenge in a Dissipative Particle Dynamics simulation. This limitation is rooted in the soft force nature of DPD and the fact that we need to use an antipenetration model for escaped particles. In the present paper, we propose a new model of antipenetration which preserves the conservation of linear momentum on the boundaries and enables us to simulate complex and flexible boundaries. Finally by performing numerical simulations, we demonstrate the validity of our new model  

The smoothed particle hydrodynamics method is used to explore the effects of design parameters on the mixing efficiency of two types of active micromixer. First, the complex flow field and the mixing process of two separated fluids in a square mixing chamber with nine symmetric microstirrers are simulated. The influence of design parameters, such as the microstirrer rotation arrangement and the angular velocity of the microstirrer, on the mixing performance, is investigated. The mixing index parameter on ten control points is calculated and the average mixing index is compared for different cases. Simulations illustrate that the rotation arrangement of microstirrers is a key parameter in the...