Effect of particle shape in the transport of particles in microfluidic flows

Particle transport in microfluidic flows has a wide range of applications in fields of biomedicine, diagnostics, chemical processing, additive manufacturing, and fluid mechanics, etc. In microfluidic flows, where the particle size is comparable to that of the characteristic length of the system, the particles tend to be influenced greatly by the particle-particle interaction forces, and particle-wall interaction forces. In addition to these interaction forces, the particle-fluid interaction is also affected by the particle shape and size. In this study, we firstly analyze the effect of particle shape and size on the particle transport in a microchannel flow by studying the particle transport of spherical and ellipsoidal particles under similar flow conditions. A fully coupled interaction between the fluid flow and the particle transport shows that the ellipsoidal particles undergo simultaneous rotation and transverse motion while being advected along the length of the channel. Such a particle shape-based transport behavior of ellipsoidal particle can be associated with the prevention of the phenomenon of coffee-stain in additive manufacturing. We finally discuss the effect of particle shape and its role in the prevention of coffee-stain.