Computer Simulation of Fluid Flow in Microfluidic Devices

Computer simulations of fluids can be an efficient way to model the behavior of fluid flow without the need to build and test a physical device. To help expedite the design of microfluidic devices and reduce the cost of the production of such devices, a computer simulation is being developed using the scientific computing library SciPy. The fluid flow in microfluidic devices can then be simulated to accurately predict the behavior of fluids in microfluidic channels via the numerical computation of the Naiver-Stokes equations with the appropriate boundary conditions. This can drastically improve the ability to fabricate devices compared to purely experimental techniques. The effectiveness of the model will be tested to determine the advantage of using a simulation to aid in the process of the development of microfluidic devices. By using technique, future undergraduate researchers will be able to further refine the simulation, adding more features and bringing the simulation results into agreement with experimental data.