Numerical Simulations of Colliding Particle Distribution in Flow Chamber

Abstract

The adhesion of flowing cells to the vascular surface occurs in many physiological and pathological processes. The Parallel flow chamber (PFC) system is usually used to investigate this transport-dependent process. Understanding of the cells locomotion near the bottom, cells collision with the wall and the spatial distribution of the colliding particles in the chamber bottom should have useful in modeling of the cells adhesion and analyzing of the PFC biological experimental data. Here, with ADINA-F finite element analysis software, the collision events of small spherical particles pouring into inlet to PFC are numerically simulated for different wall shear stresses, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 4dyn/cm2. And, by tracing the trajectory of the particles from the inlet to the bottom of flow chamber, the spatial distribution of the colliding particles in the PFC was predicted. The results show that, the collision events between the particles pouring into flow chamber and the flow chamber bottom decrease as increasing shear stress, the collision fraction of the particles is less than 12.5% under different shear conditions, and the front bench positions of the colliding particles are dependent on the initial position being released from inlet. The aim of our numerical simulation lies in give one some enlighten in the design of the flow chamber and the data analysis of flow chamber experiments.