AbstractsBiology & Animal Science

Significant achievements have been made in the area of lab-on-a-chip devices for biomedical analysis. The recent development of microfluidics has further promoted the successful development of lab-on-a-chip devices by enabling researchers to use numerical methods to improve device performance. In this work, by using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model, we studied the non-Newtonian shear-thinning viscosity of blood capillary flow in micro-channels with diameters under 100 µm. The blood penetration, withdrawal and final equilibrium are observed. The effects of the size of the microchannels and the concentration of red blood cells (RBCs) in blood on filling distance are also determined. It is found that the blood with 65% RBC concentration withdraws more than those with lower RBC concentrations in the same microchannel. For the blood with lower RBC concentration, increasing the microchannel diameter results in a significant increase in filling distance. This effect was less pronounced for blood with higher RBC concentration. The demonstrated results can be used to improve the design and efficiency of lab-on-a-chip devices that use sample transport by capillary forces.