Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Optimization Of Microfluidic Particle Separator Geometry Using Computational Fluid Dynamics, Joseph Petersen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational fluid dynamics software was used to simulate the motion of circulating tumor cells in a variety of microfluidic cell isolation devices. Design of several novel microfluidic cell isolation devices was aided by viewing streamlines of fluid in devices in simulation. Devices that performed best in simulation used 5-micrometer wide guiding channels to guide cells to the capture location in the device. While these devices performed better than other devices in simulation and captured all particles regardless of position along inlet, experimental results differ from simulation.