Numerical investigation of particle separation in Y-shaped bifurcating microchannels

• 作者: Mahya Meyari Zeinab Salehi Reza Zarghami Mahdi Saeedipour
• 来源期刊: 颗粒学报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2021,（3）
• 页码范围: 142-151
• 页数: 10页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

In this study the Zweifach-Fung effect is investigated in a Y-shaped bifurcation when the clearance between the rigid spherical particle and the walls is small compared to both channel's and particle's radii.Single-and two-particle systems are studied using resolved computational fluid dynamics cou-pled to discrete element method to obtain a two-dimensional map of the initially positioned particles that would enter each child branch.In all cases,the path selection of the sphere depends on its two-dimensional positioning far from the bifurcation region in the parent channel.Increasing the flow rate ratio or decreasing the Reynolds number intensifies the Zweifach-Fung bifurcation effect in a single-particle system.Similarly,in two-particle systems where non-contact particle-particle interaction is present,decreasing the particle-to-particle distance reduces the bifurcation effect,while changing the Reynolds number has the same influence as in the single-particle systems.The results provide insight for optimizing the flow characteristics in bifurcating microchannels to separate the suspended particles.