The overall traffic of droplets in a network of microfluidic channels is strongly influenced by the liquid properties of the moving droplets. In particular, the effective hydrodynamic resistance of individual droplets plays a key role in their global behavior. Here we propose two simple and low-cost experimental methods for measuring this parameter by analyzing the dynamics of a regular sequence of droplets injected into an “asymmetric loop” network. The choice of a droplet taking either route through the loop is influenced by the presence of previous droplets that modulate the hydrodynamic resistance of the branches they are sitting in. We propose to extract the effective resistance of a droplet from easily observable time series, namely, from the choices the droplets make at junctions and from the interdroplet distances. This becomes possible when utilizing a recently proposed theoretical model based on a number of simplifying assumptions. Here we present several sets of measurements of the hydrodynamic resistance of droplets, expressed in terms of a “resistance length.” The aim is twofold: (1) to reveal its dependence on a number of parameters, such as the viscosity, the volume of droplets, their velocity as well as the spacing between them. At the same time (2), by using a standard measurement technique, we compare the limitations of the proposed methods. As an important result of this comparison, we obtain the range of validity of the simplifying assumptions made in the theoretical model.
Skip Nav Destination
,
,
,
,
Article navigation
March 2009
Research Article|
March 30 2009
Extracting the hydrodynamic resistance of droplets from their behavior in microchannel networks
Vincent Labrot;
Vincent Labrot
1
Rhodia/CNRS Laboratory of the Future
, 178 avenue du Docteur Schweitzer, 33608 Pessac, France
Search for other works by this author on:
Michael Schindler;
Michael Schindler
2Laboratoire Physico-Chimie Théorique,
UMR “Gulliver” CNRS-ESPCI 7083
, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
Search for other works by this author on:
Pierre Guillot;
Pierre Guillot
1
Rhodia/CNRS Laboratory of the Future
, 178 avenue du Docteur Schweitzer, 33608 Pessac, France
Search for other works by this author on:
Annie Colin;
Annie Colin
1
Rhodia/CNRS Laboratory of the Future
, 178 avenue du Docteur Schweitzer, 33608 Pessac, France
Search for other works by this author on:
Mathieu Joanicot
Mathieu Joanicot
1
Rhodia/CNRS Laboratory of the Future
, 178 avenue du Docteur Schweitzer, 33608 Pessac, France
Search for other works by this author on:
Vincent Labrot
1
Michael Schindler
2
Pierre Guillot
1
Annie Colin
1
Mathieu Joanicot
1
1
Rhodia/CNRS Laboratory of the Future
, 178 avenue du Docteur Schweitzer, 33608 Pessac, France
2Laboratoire Physico-Chimie Théorique,
UMR “Gulliver” CNRS-ESPCI 7083
, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
Biomicrofluidics 3, 012804 (2009)
Article history
Received:
October 03 2008
Accepted:
March 09 2009
Citation
Vincent Labrot, Michael Schindler, Pierre Guillot, Annie Colin, Mathieu Joanicot; Extracting the hydrodynamic resistance of droplets from their behavior in microchannel networks. Biomicrofluidics 1 March 2009; 3 (1): 012804. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3109686
Download citation file:
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Citing articles via
Opportunities of scalable and electrostatically optimized electrodes for electric field- and current-driven microfluidic applications
K.-S. Csizi, A. E. Frackowiak, et al.
Temperature-dependent microfluidic impedance spectroscopy for non-invasive biofluid characterization
Tom Wade, Sohini Kar-Narayan
Related Content
Hydrodynamic resistance and mobility of deformable objects in microfluidic channels
Biomicrofluidics (October 2014)
The rheology of binary mixtures of highly concentrated emulsions: Effect of droplet size ratio
J. Rheol. (September 2012)
Droplet migration through deformable stenosed microchannel: Dynamics and blockage
Physics of Fluids (May 2024)
Capillary instability, squeezing, and shearing in head-on microfluidic devices
J. Appl. Phys. (December 2009)
Tuning bubbly structures in microchannels
Biomicrofluidics (April 2012)