Drug Particle Delivery Investigation Through a Valveless Micropump

Micropumps with various types of actuations are being used in microfluidic transport for liquid drug delivery. Due to the complexity of the flow field, particle transport through a valveless micropump might be challenging in comparison to a pressure-driven flow micropumps. In order to better understand and develop an optimized design for the delivery of drug particles through valveless micropumps, computational simulations may be necessary. In this paper, the transport of drug particles through the valveless micropump is simulated through 3-D computational fluid dynamics combined with discrete particle transport methods. After computational validation, the effects of actuation frequency, particle size, and transporting style on the particle transport are investigated. Both the actuation frequency and transporting pattern have a strong relationship in terms of resident times and the spatial distribution of the transported particles through the designed micropump. The computational analysis results presented demonstrate that it is possible to optimize the proposed valveless micropump design through numerical simulations for specific delivery of drug particles.