The Effect of the Layered Internal Structure of Fibrous Beds on the Hydrodynamic Diffusive Behavior of Microparticles

To separate and collect microparticles such as cells, the behavior of particles in fibrous filters was investigated. It is essential to understand, in detail, the motion of particles in microscale flows, because Re is often small, and particles exhibit complex behaviors such as changes in relative position and spreading owing to hydrodynamic interactions. We calculated the motion of microparticles passing through the fibrous bed using the Stokesian dynamics method, in which hydrodynamic interaction is considered, theoretically. The fibrous bed was modeled by particles and five types of structures (a monolayer with fiber volume fractions ϕ of 3%, 4%, and 5%, and a bilayer with ϕ = 3−5% and 5−3%) were considered. Our numerical results showed that the particles moved in a complicated manner, and spread throughout the fibrous bed. It was found that the behavior of individual microparticles varied depending on the internal structure, although the average permeation velocity was primarily determined by the fiber volume fraction. This great dependence of the behavior of particle assemblage on the internal structure of the fibrous bed was caused by the individual particle motion under the influence of the layers in front of and behind them, owing to the hydrodynamic interaction.

Impact of polydispersity and confinement on diffusion in hydrodynamically interacting colloidal suspensions

We present a computational study of the equilibrium dynamics of a polydisperse hard-sphere colloidal dispersion confined in a spherical cavity. We account for many-body hydrodynamic and lubrication interactions between particles and with the confining cavity utilizing our confined Stokesian dynamics model, expanded here for size polydispersity. We find that, even though the tendency of polydispersity to homogenize structure in a suspension is still present in confinement, strong correlations induced by the cavity resist homogenization. Although seemingly opposite, these two effects have a common driver, which is to maximize configurational entropy of particles in the cavity interior. These structural effects couple with the hydrodynamics to change the particle dynamics: polydispersity weakens lubrication effects near the cavity wall, allowing small (large) particles to diffuse faster (slower) than in a monodisperse suspension. As a small (large) particle gets farther from the wall, polydispersity weakens many-body hydrodynamic couplings, driving diffusivity up (down). While the local cage dynamics dominates short-time self-diffusion, long-time dynamics is also affected. In the concentrated regime, polydispersity and confinement combine to induce radial de-mixing into size-segregated populations. The cavity becomes the most influential ‘nearest neighbour’, setting the length scale of and dynamics within these radial domains. This intermediate length-scale caging makes the angular dynamics insensitive to polydispersity but leads to radial long-time mean-square displacement that changes qualitatively with volume composition. These results hold promise for explaining colloidal-scale physics implicated in the functioning of biological cells, and the engineering of non-living confined colloids where size de-mixing could be useful in the design of encapsulated micro-reactors and therapeutic vesicles.

Stokesian dynamics simulations of a magnetotactic bacterium

The swimming of bacteria provides insight into propulsion and steering under the conditions of low-Reynolds number hydrodynamics. Here we address the magnetically steered swimming of magnetotactic bacteria. We use Stokesian dynamics simulations to study the swimming of single-flagellated magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) in an external magnetic field. Our model MTB consists of a spherical cell body equipped with a magnetic dipole moment and a helical flagellum rotated by a rotary motor. The elasticity of the flagellum as well as magnetic and hydrodynamic interactions is taken into account in this model. We characterized how the swimming velocity is dependent on parameters of the model. We then studied the U-turn motion after a field reversal and found two regimes for weak and strong fields and, correspondingly, two characteristic time scales. In the two regimes, the U-turn time is dominated by the turning of the cell body and its magnetic moment or the turning of the flagellum, respectively. In the regime for weak fields, where turning is dominated by the magnetic relaxation, the U-turn time is approximately in agreement with a theoretical model based on torque balance. In the strong-field regime, strong deformations of the flagellum are observed. We further simulated the swimming of a bacterium with a magnetic moment that is inclined relative to the flagellar axis. This scenario leads to intriguing double helical trajectories that we characterize as functions of the magnetic moment inclination and the magnetic field. For small inclination angles ($$\lesssim {20^{\circ }}$$≲20∘) and typical field strengths, the inclination of the magnetic moment has only a minor effect on the swimming of MTB in an external magnetic field. Large inclination angles result in a strong reduction in the velocity in direction of the magnetic field, consistent with recent observations that bacteria with large inclination angles use a different propulsion mechanism.Graphic abstract

Shear-induced glass-to-crystal transition in anisotropic clay-like suspensions

A new numerical framework based on Stokesian dynamics is used to study a shear-induced glass-to-crystal transition in suspensions of clay-like anisotropically charged platelets.

Modeling particle-fluid interaction in a coupled CFD-DEM framework

In this work, we present an alternative methodology to solve the particle-fluid interaction in the resolved CFDEM ® coupling framework. This numerical approach consists of coupling a Discrete Element Method (DEM) with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) scheme, solving the motion of immersed particles in a fluid phase. As a novelty, our approach explicitly accounts for the body force acting on the fluid phase when computing the local momentum balance equations. Accordingly, we implement a fluid-particle interaction computing the buoyant and drag forces as a function of local shear strain and pressure gradient. As a benchmark, we study the Stokesian limit of a single particle. The validation is performed comparing our outcomes with the ones provided by a previous resolved methodology and the analytical prediction. In general, we find that the new implementation reproduces with very good accuracy the Stokesian dynamics. Complementarily, we study the settling terminal velocity of a sphere under confined conditions.

Dynamical modes of sheared confined microscale matter

Based on (overdamped) Stokesian dynamics simulations and video microscopy experiments, we study the non equilibrium dynamics of a sheared colloidal cluster, which is confined to a two-dimensional disk.