Oscillations of confined fibers transported in microchannels

Abstract

We investigate the trajectories of rigid fibers as they are transported in a pressure-driven flow, at low Reynolds number, in shallow Hele Shaw cells. The transverse confinement and the resulting viscous friction on these elongated objects, as well as the lateral confinement (i.e. the presence of lateral walls), lead to complex fibers trajectories that we characterize with a combination of microfluidic experiments and simulations using modified Brinkman equations. We show that the transported fiber behaves as an oscillator for which we obtain and analyze a complete state diagram.

References in corpus (3)

• The hydrodynamics of swimming microorganisms
• Sedimentation of spheroidal bodies near walls in viscous fluids: glancing, reversing, tumbling, and sliding
• Boundary elements method for microfluidic two-phase flows in shallow channels

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Microfluidic In Situ Measurement of Poisson's Ratio of Hydrogels
• Transport of flexible fibers in confined micro-channels
• Universal motion of mirror-symmetric microparticles in confined Stokes flow
• Controlling transport dynamics of confined asymmetric fibers
• Jet-driven viscous locomotion of confined thermoresponsive microgels
• Fiber buckling in confined viscous flows: an absolute instability described by the Ginzburg-Landau equation