Mixing control for biomechanical engineering applications

在许多涉及湍流或层流的工业应用中，需要增强流体混合。内燃机、燃气轮机、工业燃烧器和肉鸡、化学推进剂和焚化炉中的流动，仅举几例，是与发电、玻璃工业、公共和私人运输以及污染相关的典型湍流。搅拌槽反应器、隔板混合器和滚筒瓶中的流动，仅举几例，是与化工、石化、制药和食品工业过程相关的典型层流。微混合器中的流动与生物医学应用相关，例如分析化学、高通量血液检测、药物合成和微生物分析等。-混合的优化和控制在现代和未来的生物力学应用中是高度相关的，因为允许找到合适的混合动作的时间越来越短，而要求越来越严格。更好地理解混合对于改进旧的和设计新的生物力学混合装置至关重要，这些混合装置能够减少停留混合时间，改善混合均匀性，并允许生物流体过程对强剪切应力和温度梯度的存在高度敏感。-近年来，生物力学集成产生了巨大的机器人流体工作站，需要相当大的费用，空间和劳动力。尽管极其昂贵，但生物力学自动化已经具有很高的生产力，并导致了全基因组测序和分析。因此，生物力学工程界强烈希望使用微流体设备提高集成和自动化程度，同时降低成本、劳动力和空间要求。提出的研究的主要目的是通过设计优化和控制策略来促进集成和自动化，从而增强微设备的混合。

The need to enhance fluid mixing is felt in many industrial applications involving turbulent or laminar flows. Flows in internal combustion engines, gas turbines, industrial burners and broilers, chemical propellants and incinerators, to name a few, are typical turbulent flows of relevance in power generation, the glass industry, public and private transportation and pollution. Flows in stirred tank reactors, partitioned pipe mixers and roller bottles, to name a few, are typical laminar flows of relevance in chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, and food industry processes. Flows in micromixers are of relevance in biomedical applications such as analytical chemistry, high-throughput blood testing,pharmaceutical synthesis and microbiological analysis, to name a few.- Optimization and control of mixing is highly relevant in modern and futuristic biomechanical applications because the time allowed to find the appropriate mixing action is becoming increasingly shorter while the demands are increasingly more severe. A better understanding of mixing is crucial for improving old and designing new biomechanical mixing devices that are able to reduce the residence mixing time, improve mixing homogeneity and allow the process of biological fluids highly sensitive to the presence of strong shear-stresses and temperature gradients.- In recent years, biomechanical integration has produced enormous robotic fluidic workstations that require considerable expense, space and labor. Although extremely expensive, biomechanical automation has already been highly productive and has led to whole genome sequencing and analysis. Consequently, the biomechanical engineering community is strongly motivated in increasing integration and automation using microfluidics devices, while reducing costs, labor and space requirements. The main objective of the proposed research is to contribute to integration and automation by designing optimization and control strategies able to enhance mixing in micro devices.