Trebotich D., Colella P., Miller G., Liepmann D.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, US
Keywords: microfluidics, viscoelasticity
We present a numerical method to model non-Newtonian, viscoelastic flow at the microscale. The equations of motion are the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the Oldroyd-B constitutive equation. This constitutive equation is chosen to model a Boger fluid which is representative of complex biological solutions exhibiting elastic behavior due to macromolecules in the solution (e.g., DNA solution). Our numerical approach is a projection method to impose the incompressibility constraint and a Lax-Wendroff method to predict velocities and stresses while recovering both viscous and elastic limits. The method is second-order accurate in space and time, free-stream preserving, has a time step constraint determined by the advective CFL condition, and requires the solution of only well-behaved linear systems amenable to the use of fast iterative methods. We demonstrate the method for viscoelastic incompressible flow in simple microchannels (2D) and microducts (3D).
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Technical Proceedings of the 2003 Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 2
Published: February 23, 2003
Pages: 520 - 523
Industry sectors: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing | Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: Informatics, Modeling & Simulation
ISBN: 0-9728422-1-7