Thermal and multiphase flow simulations of polytetrafluoroethylene-based grease flow in restricted geometry

This work presents a numerical model for predicting flow behaviour and temperature distribution of polytetrafluoroethylene thickened grease in a roller bearing configuration of obstructed flow. A finite-element code with a laminar flow multiphase mixture model is used to predict the flow patterns and volume fraction distribution of a thickener in a rectangular channel with two cylindrical rollers rotating at constant angular speeds ranging from 50 to 200 r/min. A heat transfer analysis has been done to study the temperature variation near the rollers. Simulations are carried out for 5%, 10% and 20% concentrations of the thickener. Rheological characterisation of the proposed grease samples is done. An experimentally developed rheological model is incorporated in the numerical model. The rheological characteristics of the samples follow the Herschel–Bulkley model. The velocity profiles obtained from the present numerical model are compared with the nearest available experimental microparticle image velocimetry profiles for lithium complex grease to find qualitative similarity. The variation of volume fraction distribution and temperature at different times and locations of the channel is predicted. The rotation of rollers affects the local distribution of a thickener as well as the rate of homogenisation with the oil. As polytetrafluoroethylene grease is able to maintain its rheology even at elevated temperatures, most of the channel portion is thermally unaffected due to heat dissipation up to 5 W.

µ-PIV Measurements of Flows Generated by Photolithography-Fabricated Achiral Microswimmers

Robotic micro/nanoswimmers can potentially be used as tools for medical applications, such as drug delivery and noninvasive surgery. Recently, achiral microswimmers have gained significant attention because of their simple structures, which enables high-throughput fabrication and size scalability. Here, microparticle image velocimetry (µ-PIV) was used to study the hydrodynamics of achiral microswimmers near a boundary. The structures of these microswimmers resemble the letter L and were fabricated using photolithography and thin-film deposition. Through µ-PIV measurements, the velocity flow fields of the microswimmers rotating at different frequencies were observed. The results herein yield an understanding of the hydrodynamics of the L-shaped microswimmers, which will be useful in applications such as fluidic manipulation.

Accelerated Particle Separation in a DLD Device at Re > 1 Investigated by Means of µPIV

A pressure resistant and optically accessible deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) device was designed and microfabricated from silicon and glass for high-throughput fractionation of particles between 3.0 and 7.0 µm comprising array segments of varying tilt angles with a post size of 5 µm. The design was supported by computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations using OpenFOAM software. Simulations indicated a change in the critical particle diameter for fractionation at higher Reynolds numbers. This was experimentally confirmed by microparticle image velocimetry (µPIV) in the DLD device with tracer particles of 0.86 µm. At Reynolds numbers above 8 an asymmetric flow field pattern between posts could be observed. Furthermore, the new DLD device allowed successful fractionation of 2 µm and 5 µm fluorescent polystyrene particles at Re = 0.5–25.

Resonant Mixing in Glass Bowl Microbioreactor Investigated by Microparticle Image Velocimetry

Microbioreactors are gaining increased interest in biopharmaceutical research. Due to their decreasing size, the parallelization of multiple reactors allows for simultaneous experiments. This enables the generation of high amounts of valuable data with minimal consumption of precious pharmaceutical substances. However, in bioreactors of all scales, fast mixing represents a crucial condition. Efficient transportation of nutrients to the cells ensures good growing conditions, homogeneous environmental conditions for all cultivated cells, and therefore reproducible and valid data. For these reasons, a new type of batch microbioreactor was developed in which any moving mixer component is rendered obsolete through the utilization of capillary surface waves for homogenization. The bioreactor was fabricated in photosensitive glass and its fluid volume of up to 8 µL was provided within a bowl-shaped volume. External mechanical actuators excited capillary surface waves and stereo microparticle image velocimetry (µPIV) was used to analyze resulting convection at different excitation conditions in varied reactor geometries. Typical vortex patterns were observed at certain resonance frequencies where best mixing conditions occurred. Based on the results, a simplified 1D model which predicts resonance frequencies was evaluated. Cultivation of Escherichia coli BL21 under various mixing conditions showed that mixing in resonance increased the biomass growth rate, led to high biomass concentrations, and provided favorable growth conditions. Since glass slides containing multiple bowl reactors can be excited as a whole, massive parallelization is foreseen.

Experimental Study of the Suspension Flow Past Confined Low-Aspect-Ratio Cylinder Arranged Microchannels

The recirculating wake behind the obstacle at moderate Reynolds numbers was devoid of particles, this was discovered by Haddadi et al. (J. Fluid Mech., 2014). However, only one obstacle and narrow Reynolds numbers were considered in their work. In this work, we constructed more confined environment, where the suspensions of solid fraction 0.25% with different particle diameters of 1, 5 and 10 μm flow past the critical confined low-aspect-ratio cylinder arrays (H/D = 0.3) with different arrangements were experimentally carried out. Reynolds numbers performed in the experiments ranged from 14∼550, and different flow patterns were observed. It was found that particles could flow into the region behind cylinder at low flow rate. Then, particle-depleted wake zone was formed behind the cylinder when increasing Re, which is similar with reported literature. It was interesting to find that when increasing Re further, the particles could flow into the recirculating wake zone behind cylinder. We generalized the particle behavior behind cylinder as from “entry” to “particle-free” and to “re-entry”. Additionally, the influence of different layout modes with inline and staggered cylinder arrays were also investigated. We found the particle-depleted wake zones behind the in-line cylinder array were larger than the one of the staggered cylinder array as the velocity were the same at “particle-free” stage. The in-line cylinder array possessed higher ability of allowing 1 μm particles to fill with the recirculating wake, whereas there were always existing particle-free zones in the core of recirculating wake of staggered cylinder array at “re-entry” stage. In order to understand particle-free mechanism better, microparticle image velocimetry (μPIV) technique was utilized to quantitatively measure the flow fields of in-line and staggered arranged cylinders. The obtained fluorescence pictures demonstrated that few particles flow into the zone behind cylinder at the “particle-free” stage, and fluorescence particles can flow into the wake at “re-entry” stage. That is, fluorescence particles also experienced the stages from “entry” to “particle-free” and to “re-entry”.

An Experimental Investigation of the Permeability in Porous Chip Formed by Micropost Arrays Based on Microparticle Image Velocimetry and Micromanometer Measurements

Measurements of velocity and pressure differences for flows in porous chip fabricated with micropost arrays arranged in square pattern were implemented by using micro-particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV) and high precision micromanometer. Based on the measurement results, the permeability was solved by Brinkman equation under the averaged velocities over the cross section, two-dimensional velocities on the center plane of the microchannels, and the averaged velocities on the center plane considering the effect of depth of correlation (DOC), respectively. The experimental results indicate that the nondimensional permeability based on different velocities satisfies the Kozeny–Carman (KC) equation. The Kozeny factor is taken as 40 for the averaged velocity over the cross section and 15 for two kinds of center velocities based on the micropost array of this study, respectively. The permeability calculated by the velocities on the center plane is greater than that by the averaged velocity over the cross section.