Accurate numerical prototypes of microfluidic droplet generators with open source tools

Abstract

Droplet-based microfluidics gained significant attention for its high technological impact in various fields like (bio)analysis and (bio)synthesis. Precise and controlled droplet size is critical, for the encapsulated products, or the yield of chemical reactions. In a broad range of experimental parameters, the understanding of how droplets form, interact and move with accurate predictive models is crucial. In this work, numerical prototypes of droplet generators were made with Basilisk, an open source software for solving partial differential equations on adaptive Cartesian meshes including grid adaptation and scalability for High-Performance Computing (HPC). This research aims to analyze and compare the obtained droplets against existing experimental data. The evaluation involves qualitative and quantitative comparisons, considering various channel geometries, flow rates, and rheological conditions. The validation of the proposed tool in terms of accuracy and computational performance, enable us to offer to the microfluidics community a reliable tool to design and optimize droplet generators.