TWO DIMENSIONAL NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF DROPLET MICROFLUIDIC DEVICE WITH T-JUNCTION GEOMETRY

• Main Author: Zahraketzia Sarwono, Febricetta
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/73115
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

<p align="justify"> Microfluidics is a technology for manipulating fluids at a micro-scale that can process fluids with several advantages, such as low-cost manifacturing, fast analysis time, the ability to utilize small volumes of fluids, and reduced waste production. Microfluidics ensures a laminar flow of fluids due to its small scale, alowing easier fluid manipulation. One subcategory of microfluidics is droplet microfluidics, where microfluidic devices produce fluid droplets at a micro-scale for various applications. This subcategory of droplet microfluidics utilizes at least two immiscible fluids, where a dispersed fluid is injected into a continuous fluid flow. One example of the application of this concept can be found in passive droplet microfluidic devices with T-junction geometry, where the dispersed fluid is separated into droplets by using continuous fluid flow at a perpendicular angle. This scheme has been implemented in experimental research to produce droplets with uniform sizes and a simple formation scheme, as well as having a tendency for easier flow control. This final project research focuses on the numerical simulation of droplet formation in microfluidic devices using two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) scheme. The numerical simulation results successfully provide a comprehensive understanding of the droplet formation scheme based on shear stress, pressure, and velocity values at the droplet formation point. As the flow rate of the dispersed fluid increases, higher shear stress and pressure values are obtained while the velocity decreases, resulting in longer droplets and shorter droplets gap. The simulation results also show a relatively uniform droplet size variation within the range of 0.81 to 3.28%. Additionally, the simulation results exhibit comparative trends with the experimental results from previous research regarding channel height and flow rate variations, as indicated by Pearson correlation coefficients exceeding 0.9 in all scenarios with p-values below 0.05, despite unavoidable numerical errors. .