The Fluid Mechanics Webinar Series

Speaker: Anne-Virginie Salsac, CNRS Director of Research, Biomechanics and Bioengineering Laboratory, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France

Date/Time: Friday 5th November 2021 4pm GMT/12am EDT

Title: Fluid structure interactions of a microcapsule in flow: when numerical modeling meet experiments

Abstract: Encapsulation consists in enclosing an internal medium in a solid semi-permeable membrane to protect it and control the exchanges with the environment. Being at the source of innovative applications in the fields of biotechnologies, pharmacology, or food industry, capsules offer tremendous potential in the process engineering world. But scientific challenges remain to be met, such as finding the optimal compromise between payload and membrane thickness, characterizing the membrane resistance and controlling the moment of rupture.

We will explore the challenges to use deformable liquid-core capsules of micrometric size to efficiently transport active material, with a primary focus on health-related applications. Being used suspended in a carrying fluid in flow, microcapsules constitute a formidable problem of complex fluid-structure interactions. I will present how the three-dimensional capsule-flow interactions may be modeled and how these sophisticated numerical models can dialogue with microfluidic experimentations to produce innovative techniques to characterize the mechanical properties of deformable capsules, sort them upon their rigidity or enrich suspensions.