Numerical Analysis of an Acoustofluidic Device for Particle Trapping

Handling with acoustic phenomena in microfluidic devices is an attractive capability for controlling microparticles and manipulating fluids at the micro-scale, with huge potential in medical research and bionengineering. In particular, the complex phenomena generating the forces acting on the particles and the acoustic streaming vortices are of high interest to accomplish these desired functions. In order to create innovative devices, acoustofluidic has been studied extensively in the recent years, with experimental and numerical approaches. The derived theoretical models and the software developement in the last decade, allow the numerical simulations to be able to reproduce well the experimental results. The aim of this work is to provide a computational analysis of the particles trapping in the streaming vortices generated by the oscillation of pillars arrays in the channel of a micro-device. This phenomenon has been observed in the experiments, but a numerical analysis is required in order to find the optimal design for the lab-on-a-chip system and to work at the best operative conditions for achieving particles trapping.