COMSOL Assistance For The Determination Of Pressure Drops In Complex Microfluidic Channels

J. Berthier, R. Renaudot, P. Dalle, G. Blanco-Gomez, F. Rivera, P. Caillat, and V. Agache
CEA-LETI, Grenoble, France
Published in 2010

With the current trend towards always more complexity associated to more functionalities in biotechnological systems, it is required to know with accuracy the pressure drop in the circuitry of microfluidic systems. In general, a full three-dimensional calculation is not tractable due to the limited capacity of the computers. However, computational models can help to produce pressure drop correlations. In this work, we use COMSOL to contribute to the determination of pressure drops in different types of geometry, typical of biochips, like rectangular and pillared channels, and for different liquids, including non-Newtonian biologic liquids. We show that the numerical results agree with the theoretical results—when they exist—and investigate the potentialities and limits of the 2D-Helle-Shaw formulation.