title: Quasi-3D Modeling and Efficient Simulation of Laminar Flows in Microfluidic Devices.
abstract: A quasi-3D model has been developed to simulate the flow in planar microfluidic systems with low Reynolds numbers. The model was developed by decomposing the flow profile along the height of a microfluidic system into a Fourier series. It was validated against the analytical solution for flow in a straight rectangular channel and the full 3D numerical COMSOL Navier-Stokes solver for flow in a T-channel. Comparable accuracy to the full 3D numerical solution was achieved by using only three Fourier terms with a significant decrease in computation time. The quasi-3D model was used to model flows in a micro-flow cytometer chip on a desktop computer and good agreement between the simulation and the experimental results was found.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1H9, Canada. mzislam@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Md Zahurul
authors.initials: MZ
authors.lastname: Islam
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 1H9, Canada. ytsui@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Ying Yin
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Tsui
keywords: computational microfluid dynamics; microfluidic cytometer; microfluidic flow simulation; microfluidics