Tuesday, 10/19/2021
2:00 PM
Zoom Link: https://ccny.zoom.us/j/86782105085
Professor Ivan Christov
Purdue University, School of Mechanical Engineering
“Soft Hydraulics: Fluid Flows Through Compliant Conduits”
ABSTRACT
Microfluidic devices manufactured from soft polymeric materials have emerged as a paradigm for cheap, disposable and easy-to-prototype fluidic platforms for integrating chemical and biological assays and analyses. The interplay between the flow forces and the inherently compliant conduits of such devices requires careful consideration. Mechanical compliance of these devices has now become a paradigm, enabling new approaches to microrheological measurements, new modalities of micromixing, and improved sieving of micro- and nano-particles, to name a few applications. First, I will discuss our research program on the theory of soft hydraulics of Newtonian fluid flows through compliant conduits has matured. Then, I will describe the more challenging case of how to construct tractable, reduced models of soft hydraulics of complex fluids, taking into account their shear-dependent viscosity, the hydrodynamic pressure gradients during flow, and the elastic response (bulging and deformation) of the soft conduits due to flow within, including the effect of cross-sectional conduit geometry on the resulting fluid–structure interaction. In doing so, previous experimental results will be rationalized by our theory, and new predictions (to be tested by future experiments) will be made. Further information is available in my recent review: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.07164
BRIEF ACADEMIC/EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
Dr. Christov received his Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences & Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2011. Subsequently, he was awarded a highly-selective NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and spent two years with the Complex Fluids Group at Princeton University. In 2013, Dr. Christov was selected as the Richard P. Feynman Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Theory and Computing at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Since 2016, he has been an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University directing the Transport: Modeling, Numerics & Theory laboratory, where advanced mathematics is combined with state-of-the-art simulations to make progress on fundamental questions at the interface of engineering, mathematics, and physics. In 2017, Dr. Christov was recognized via a Doctoral New Investigator award from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund. His research has also been continuously supported by the National Science Foundation.
MOST RECENT RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Fluid Mechanics, Soft Matter, Granular Flow, Nonlinear Waves, Applied Mathematics
