The air entrainment and hydrodynamic shear of the liquid slosh in syringes

Abstract

Understanding the interface motion and hydrodynamic shear induced by the liquid sloshing during the insertion stage of an autoinjector can help improve drug product administration. We perform experiments to investigate the interfacial motion and hydrodynamic shear due to the acceleration and deceleration of syringes. The goal is to explore the role of fluid properties, air gap size, and syringe acceleration on the interface dynamics caused by autoinjector activation. We used a simplified autoinjector platform to record the syringe and liquid motion without any view obstruction. Water and silicone oil with the same viscosity are used as the model fluids. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is employed to measure the velocity field. Simultaneous shadowgraph visualization captures the air entrainment. Our in-house PIV and image processing algorithms are used to quantify the hydrodynamic stress and interfacial area to investigate the effects of various autoinjector design parameters and fluid types on liquid sloshing. The results indicate that reducing the air gap volume and syringe acceleration/deceleration mitigate the interface area and effective shear. Moreover, the interfacial area and induced hydrodynamic stress decrease with the Fr=U/aD, where U is the interface velocity, a is the maximum syringe acceleration, and D is the syringe diameter.