Theory of the flow-induced deformation of shallow compliant microchannels with thick walls.

ABSTRACT: Long, shallow microchannels embedded in thick, soft materials are widely used in microfluidic devices for lab-on-a-chip applications. However, the bulging effect caused by fluid-structure interactions between the internal viscous flow and the soft walls has not been completely understood. Previous models either contain a fitting parameter or are specialized to channels with plate-like walls. This work is a theoretical study of the steady-state response of a compliant microchannel with a thick wall. Using lubrication theory for low-Reynolds-number flows and the theory for linearly elastic isotropic solids, we obtain perturbative solutions for the flow and deformation. Specifically, only the channel's top wall deformation is considered, and the ratio between its thickness t and width w is as

SUBMITTER: Wang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6894534 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature