Particle Migration and Interaction in Confined Flows

Inertial microfluidic principles are widely applied in flow cytometry, microfluidic chips, and cell filtration. The hydrodynamic nonlinearity caused by inertia regulates the location of and separation between particles in these devices. Yet, there is no theory to explain these phenomena. We describe asymptotic and numerical models for the fundamental fluid mechanics of particle migration and interaction with applications to: (i) inertial focusing and (ii) the dynamic self-assembly of particles into uniformly spaced flowing lattices.