Dissipative particle dynamics simulation of multiphase fluid flow in microchannels and microchannel networks

Multiphase fluid motion in microchannels and microchannel networks involves complicated fluid dynamics and is fundamentally important to diverse practical engineering applications such as ink-jet printing, DNA and protein micro-/nano-arraying, and fabrication of particles and capsules for controlled release of medicines. This paper presented the simulations of multiphase fluid motion in microchannels and microchannel networks using a modified dissipative particle dynamics method that employs a new conservative particle-particle interaction combining short-range repulsive and long-range attractive interactions to simulate multiphase systems. This new conservative particle-particle interaction allows the behavior of multiphase systems consisting of gases, liquids, and solids to be simulated. Three numerical examples that are closely related to engineering applications were simulated. These examples involve multiple fluid motions in (i) a simple microchannel within two parallel plates; (ii) an inverted Y-shaped microchannel junction consisting of a vertical channel that divides into two branch channels with the same aperture; and (iii) a microchannel network. The numerical results obtained by using DPD agreed well with those from other sources, and clearly demonstrated the potential value of this DPD method for modeling and analyzing multiphase flow in microchannels and microchannel networks. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.