Micro Fibers Motion in a Laminar Flow in a Microchannel

In this paper the motion of micro fibers in a microchannel is studied numerically. The liquid flow regime is considered to be laminar and it is assumed that the fluid and the fibers have a one-way interaction meaning the effects of fibers on the flow are neglected. An inlet plenum of the microchannel with 15 channels considered as the physical domain. The fluid flow in the model is solved numerically by an Eulerian approach using the conventional SIMPLE algorithm. To study the motion of the micro fibers in the flow, the fibers are considered to be ellipsoids of revolution. A code is developed which uses the fluid flow results and solves the equations of ellipsoid motion in a Lagrangian reference frame. The equations of ellipsoid motion consist of three equations for the translational motion and three equations for the rotational motion. The equations are integrated numerically to find the trajectory and the orientation of the micro fibers in the microchannel.