Lagrangian-based simulation method using constrained Stokesian dynamics for particulate flows in microchannel

A simulation method has been developed to efficiently evaluate the motion of colloidal particles in a low-Reynolds-number confined microchannel flow using a Lagrangian-based approach. In this method, the background velocity within the channel, in the absence of suspended particles, is obtained from a fluid dynamics solver and is used to update the velocity at the particle centres using the Stokesian dynamics (SD) method, which incorporates multi-body hydrodynamic interactions. As a result, instead of computing the momentum of both the fluid and particles throughout the entire computational domain, the microscopic balance equation is solved only at the particle centres, increasing the computational efficiency. To accommodate complex boundary conditions within the SD framework, imaginary particles are placed on the channel walls, allowing the mobility relation to be reformulated to apply v…