Proceedings of the 27th National and 5th International ISHMT-ASTFE Heat and Mass Transfer Conference December 14-17, 2023, IIT Patna, Patna-801106, Bihar, India
Numerical Simulation of Blood Plasma Separation in a Bended-bifurcated Microchannel
Abstract
The present work is on a two-fluid approachbased simulation of three-dimensional blood flow in an elevated dimension bended-bifurcated microchannel. Blood flow is considered as the dense suspension flow of red blood cells suspended into blood plasma. The conservation equations of blood plasma and red blood cells
are solved separately. The proposed model is validated with
experimental results for blood flow in a uniform rectangular
microchannel. A detailed analysis of local hematocrit, at various different locations, in a bended-bifurcated microchannel is presented. The proposed model-based results capture the Zweifach-Fung or bifurcation law, at an elevated dimension of microdevices. The simulation predicts the hematocrit profiles, with a shallow peak near the outer bend wall. This is due to the movement of RBCs − in the bend portion − towards the outer bend wall and the formation of a larger cell-depletion layer in the inner bend wall; due to the centrifugal effect. Our simulation predicts the decrease in both separation efficiency and bulk flow rates with increasing inlet hematocrit. The proposed two-fluid approach can be further used to study the blood flow in realistic complex microdevices to optimize its geometry and dimensions.