Sharif Digital Repository

We employ numerical simulations to investigate the breakup of droplets in micro- and nanoscale T junctions, which are used to produce small droplets from a large droplet. For this purpose a Volume f Fluid (VOF) based method is used and for verifying the reliability of the numerical outcomes, the results are compared with the available experimental and analytical results. Our results reveal that breakup time and breakup length of the droplets play important roles in handling these systems optimally. Our results also indicate that for nanoscale Tjunctions by increasing the capillary number the performance increases while for the micro-scale systems there is a specific capillary number for... 

In this paper, creeping motion of a viscoelastic drop falling through a Newtonian fluid is investigated experimentally and analytically. A polymeric solution of 0.08 % xanthan gum in 80:20 glycerol/water and silicon oil is implemented as the viscoelastic drop and the bulk viscous fluids, respectively. The shape and motion of falling drops are visualized using a high speed camera. The perturbation technique is employed for both interior and exterior flows, and Deborah and capillary numbers are considered as perturbation parameters up to second order. The product of Deborah and capillary numbers is also used as a perturbation parameter to apply the boundary condition on the deformation on the... 

The synthesis of plate-like silica particles, which are of importance for a variety of applications, are mainly based on the widely adopted method of the sol-gel reaction of silicon alkoxides in traditional batch-wise instrumentation. In this study, continuous-flow synthesis of amorphous plate-like silica particles is reported through combining droplet-based microfluidics and the sol-gel reaction of tetraethyl orthosilicate. The reaction was conducted at the surface of oil droplets, comprising tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), suspended in acidic (HCl) water, resulting in silica particles on the surface of the droplets, leaving the device with outlet flow. The synthesized particles had... 

We report different morphologies of nanodroplets over various topographical features of the supporting substrates. The effects of different parameters such as the profile of the disjoining pressure, droplet size and the geometrical parameters are studied and discussed. Also, the effects of a coating layer on the surface of the substrate are determined. It is demonstrated that the nanodroplets at some positions are not stable and gradually move to more stable positions so that the system has less energy. For grooves this results in a series of morphology diagrams of the nanodroplets over the grooves as a function of the grooves' width and the liquid volume  

The consistent behavior of non-dimensional parameters on the formation and break up of large cylindrical droplets has been studied by direct numerical simulations (DNS). A one-fluid model with a finite difference method and an advanced front tracking scheme was employed to solve unsteady, incompressible, viscous, immiscible, multi-fluid, twodimensional Navier-Stokes equations. This time dependent study allows investigation of evolution of the droplets in different cases. For moderate values of Atwood number (AT), increasing Eotvos number (Eo) explicitly increases the deformation rate in both phenomena. Otherwise, raising the Ohnesorge number (Oh) basically amplifies the viscous effects.... 

Droplet microfluidics is a platform of microfluidics in which two immiscible fluids are used to generate droplets for various biomedical applications. This platform introduces several advantages in applications such as cell lysis, cell culture, co-culture, and cell encapsulation. The most important issues regarding droplet generation devices are the fabrication complexity and maintenance of these devices. In this study, a simple and easy-to-fabricate microdroplet generator is designed and fabricated to resolve these issues. Furthermore, since this device is easy to fabricate and use, it can play a key role in the fabrication of medical devices for controlling infectious diseases in poor and... 

We develop accurate analytical relations for the droplet volume ratio, droplet length during breakup process, and pressure drop of asymmetric T junctions with a valve in each of the branches for producing unequal-sized droplets. An important advantage of this system is that after manufacturing the system, the size of the generated droplets can be changed simply by adjusting the valves. The results indicate that if the valve ratio is smaller than 0.65, the system enters a nonbreakup regime. Also the pressure drop does not depend on the time and decreases by increasing the valve ratio, namely, opening the degree of valve 1 to valve 2. In addition, the results reveal that by decreasing... 

Droplet breakup in symmetric T-junctions is one of the important phenomena in droplet microfluidics. Many studies have been done about the droplet breakup but none of them has provided a general analytical solution for the droplet breakup. In this study, we present an analytical solution to investigate the effect of important parameters such as the capillary number, droplet length, and channel widths ratio. The analytical solution is validated using the numerical simulation. Using the analytical equation and numerical results, we propose a generalized relationship. This general equation can be used as a rule of thumb for droplet breakup predictions with high accuracy. The results indicate... 

Mixing is an essential operation in many microfluidic devices. Droplet-based micromixers utilize droplets for mixing enhancement. In the present study, a novel three-dimensional simulation is conducted which has the ability to capture not only the mixing process, but also the chemical reactions inside liquid droplets. This two-phase model is used for simulating the reacting flow inside a serpentine microchannel and explores the effects of droplet size and reaction rate on the production and consumption of species in droplets. It is observed that the chemical reaction in each droplet, begins from its front area. Furthermore, it is shown that the production of species does not depend on water... 

In this study, ferrofluid droplet formation from a nozzle in the presence of a non-uniform Pulse-Width Modulated (PWM) magnetic field with different angles was studied experimentally. A Drop-on-Demand platform was introduced and three different regimes of droplet formation were observed. The regime map of the droplet formation was presented. A new type of droplet formation evolution was observed in which the droplet is formed while it is swinging around the nozzle, and the satellite droplet is not generated in this regime. The effects of five important parameters including magnetic flux density, applied magnetic frequency, duty cycle, distance between the nozzle and the center of the upper... 

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... 

In this article, droplet size and its distribution along a pulsed liquid-liquid extraction column, is studied where SiO2 nanoparticles with concentrations of 0.01, 0.05 and 0.1vol.% and different hydrophobicities are applied to the dispersed phase. Using ultrasonication, nanoparticles were dispersed in kerosene as the base fluid. Nanofluids' stability was ensured using a UV-vis spectrophotometer. Some 22,000 droplets were measured by photographic technique and results were compared with systems containing no-nanoparticles (Water-Acetic acid-Kerosene). Addition of nanoparticles changed the droplet shape from ellipsoidal to spherical. Also, there was a marked influence on droplet breakage and... 

The studies surrounding the concept of microdroplets have seen a dramatic increase in recent years. Microdroplets have applications in different fields such as chemical synthesis, biology, separation processes and micro-pumps. This study numerically investigates the effect of different parameters such as Capillary number, Length of droplets, and Magnetic Bond number on the splitting process of ferrofluid microdroplets in symmetric T-junctions using an asymmetric magnetic field. The use of said field that is applied asymmetrically to the T-junction center helps us control the splitting of ferrofluid microdroplets. During the process of numerical simulation, a magnetic field with various... 

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... 

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... 

Achieving high efficiency and throughput in droplet-based mixing over a small characteristic length, such as microfluidic channels, is one of the crucial parameters in Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) applications. One solution to achieve efficient mixing is to use active mixers in which an external power source is utilized to mix two fluids. One of these active methods is magnetic micromixers using ferrofluid. In this technique, magnetic nanoparticles are used to make one phase responsive to magnetic force, and then by applying a magnetic field, two fluid phases, one of which is magneto-responsive, will sufficiently mix. In this study, we investigated the effect of the magnetic field’s characteristics... 

Human-generated droplets constitute the main route for the transmission of coronavirus. However, the details of such transmission in enclosed environments are yet to be understood. This is because geometrical and environmental parameters can immensely complicate the problem and turn the conventional analyses inefficient. As a remedy, this work develops a predictive tool based on computational fluid dynamics and machine learning to examine the distribution of sneezing droplets in realistic configurations. The time-dependent effects of environmental parameters, including temperature, humidity and ventilation rate, upon the droplets with diameters between 1 and 250μm are investigated inside a...