Abstract

Droplet breakup and merging in a microfluidic channel, which are applied to lab-on-a-chip devices for biomedical testing and synthesis, are simulated numerically by solving the conservation equations of mass and momentum. The droplet surface is computed using the volume-of-fluid method of the commercial code FLUENT. The numerical simulation demonstrates that the variation of obstacle geometry in a microchannel determines the droplet breakup pattern and the volume fraction of split droplets. The computation also shows that droplet merging depends on the channel-chamber width ratio. The effect of microchannel and obstacle configuration on the droplet motion is investigated to find the optimal conditions for droplet breakup and merging.

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