Insect-Inspired Micropump: Flow in a Tube with Local Contractions

Yasser Aboelkassem

doi:10.3390/mi6081143

Abstract

A biologically-inspired micropumping model in a three-dimensional tube subjected to localized wall constrictions is given in this article. The present study extends our previous pumping model where a 3D channel with a square cross-section is considered. The proposed pumping approach herein applies to tubular geometries and is given to mimic an insect respiration mode, where the tracheal tube rhythmic wall contractions are used/hypothesized to enhance the internal flow transport within the entire respiration network. The method of regularized Stokeslets-mesh-free computations is used to reconstruct the flow motions induced by the wall movements and to calculate the time-averaged net flow rate. The time-averaged net flow rates from both the tube and channel models are compared. Results have shown that an inelastic tube with at least two contractions forced to move with a specific time lag protocol can work as a micropump. The system is simple and expected to be useful in many biomedical applications.

Highlights

Bioinspired micromachines are considered to be one of the most novel directions toward miniaturizing equipment for several biomedical applications
We focus our attention on a novel micropumping paradigm that is inspired by insect respiration physiology [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Inspired by the insect respiration processes and their internal flow motions, a pumping model in a three-dimensional tube subjected to two rhythmic wall contractions is proposed

Summary

Introduction

Bioinspired micromachines are considered to be one of the most novel directions toward miniaturizing equipment for several biomedical applications This will be made possible by developing state-of-the-art microfabrication technologies that can help in building micro- and nano-scale structures. The flow transport within insect physiological systems is complex and non-stationary because of insects’ use of body movements and rhythmic wall contractions along their tracheal tubes to enhance internal flow motions. A simplified solution that can describe the unsteady viscous flow motions in a semi-infinite pipe with wall contractions or expansion modes is given in [10]. Another solution to the incompressible-viscous flow in an infinitely-long channel with prescribed pulsatile and sinusoidal wall motions is derived in [11]. The flow in a tube due to wall contractions is given by multiple studies [15,16,17]

Methods

Results

Conclusion