By Matthew Chin
A research team led by UCLA bioengineers has developed a way to program and control the shape of fluids flowing through pipes or conduits without the need to solve complex and time-consuming fluid-motion equations.
This strategy, which the
By Matthew Chin
A research team led by UCLA bioengineers has developed a way to program and control the shape of fluids flowing through pipes or conduits without the need to solve complex and time-consuming fluid-motion equations.
This strategy, which the researchers liken to the major change that occurred when computer programmers no longer needed to understand the detailed physics behind computer circuits, could allow biologists, chemists, manufacturing engineers and others to tap the vast, unrealized potential of fluid-flow applications.
Co-flowing fluids are used today in a wide variety of applications. For example, medical diagnostic devices that analyze blood squeeze a central flow in a pipe with a surrounding flow — a process called hydrodynamic focusing — to achieve uniform measurements of cells within the blood. But the ability to control the shape of such fluid streams is limited and relies mostly on the relative rate at which two streams are introduced into the pipe.
The ability to more easily manipulate fluid streams into different shapes could help improve reactions in industrial plants, better cool computer chips, and shape and fabricate interlocking fibers to improve the properties of composite materials, the researchers said. Until now, however, such manipulations required a detailed knowledge of complex fluid mechanics and intricate numerical simulations.
The new strategy developed by the research team, which was led by Dino Di Carlo, associate professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, eliminates the need to understand the mechanics of flow and makes designing new flows as simple as selecting books from the library.
The group successfully demonstrated a strategy in which the user picks from a library of many different fluid flow shapes. The shapes can be combined in series to create even more complex shapes. Once a user has settled on a final shape using these simple operations, the system provides the size and location of pillars sequenced within a channel that yield the shape, without the need for any fluid dynamic simulation. Thus, the expert mathematical knowledge of how to perform such a task is no longer required, and the design process is immensely sped up.
Just as computer programming underwent a revolution when the need to understand circuit physics was eliminated, this strategy could lead to new leaps in automation in biology, chemistry and materials science, the researchers said.
The paper is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications and is available online.
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