Research

Inertial migration in microfluidic devices

To understand the flow in inertial microfluidic devices, I developed a hybrid numerical and asymptotic model for the inertial migration of a sphere in a rectangular channel. That model showed excellent agreement with observed data. And I used it to develop a model of pairwise dynamics in microfluidic crystals.

Flow past hairy surfaces

To understand how marine crustaceans use their hairy appendages for sensing and feeding, I modeled the flow past hairy surfaces.

Modeling deformable cells in microfluidic devices

To understand how mammalian cells deform in microfluidic devices, I am working on developing a reduced order model to represent the family of constant-volume shapes the cell could take. We are using spherical harmonics to represent the shapes of the cell.

I am additionally interested in modeling the fluid-structure interaction of the cell and the flow. 

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Code:

Matlab code for the inertial lift force on a particle in rectangular channels with aspect ratios AR = 1, 2, 4, 8, and 9 available on github.

Mathematica code for computing Lamb's solution external to a sphere also available on github.

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Group:

• Alex Kelley
• Olivia Chang