Dealing with Stiffness in Time-Domain Stokes Flow Simulation

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As microfluidic devices become more common and more elaborate, it becomes necessary to develop simulation tools that allow the efficient and yet accurate three dimensional time-domain analysis of the behavior of these devices. Detailed time domain analysis of three dimensional microfluidic structures requires dealing with the stiffness of the differential equations associated with the motion of objects in viscous fluids and with updating the solver grids. We minimize the issue of mesh adaptation by using the boundary element method which only requires discretizing and updating two dimensional surface meshes. We address the issue of stiffness by introducing a velocity implicit time stepping scheme that has much better stability than the explicit Forward Euler scheme and that has a much lower computational cost than a fully implicit scheme.

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Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Technical Proceedings of the 2004 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 2
Published: March 7, 2004
Pages: 387 - 390
Industry sector: Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: MEMS & NEMS Devices, Modeling & Applications
ISBN: 0-9728422-8-4