Abstract
Recently, a great deal of attention has been focused on development of microfabricated devices for manipulating minute amounts of liquids. In particular, an extensive experimental work is devoted to generation, motion and manipulation of drops in microfluidic channels, or digital microfluidics. In the present work the numerical approach based on volume-of-fluid method, combined with the piece-wise linear interface reconstruction scheme, is implemented for modeling of droplet motion and forced heat transport in a droplet-laden laminar flow in a circular microchannel. The simulations show a very good agreement with asymptotic results concerning the motion of spherical and slender drops in confined laminar flows. The effective rates of the forced heat transfer in a droplet-laden flow are found to be superior over that in single-phase Poiseuille flow. The enhancement is anticipated to be a result of the flow disturbance in the carrier fluid due to propagation of a train of translating drops and efficient convective transport within drops due to internal circulation.
Published Version
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