Mixing control for biomechanical engineering applications

在许多涉及湍流或层流的工业应用中，都能感觉到加强流体混合的必要性。仅举几例，内燃机、燃气轮机、工业燃烧器和烧烤炉、化学推进剂和焚烧炉中的流动是与发电、玻璃工业、公共和私人运输以及污染相关的典型湍流。仅举几例，搅拌釜式反应器、分隔管搅拌器和滚筒瓶中的流动是化工、石化、制药和食品工业过程中的典型层流。微型混合器中的流动在生物医学应用中具有相关性，例如分析化学、高通量血液测试、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具有高度相关性，因为找到合适的混合动作所需的时间越来越短，而需求却越来越苛刻。更好地了解混合对于改进旧的生物机械混合设备和设计新的生物机械混合设备至关重要，这些设备能够缩短停留混合时间，改善混合均匀度，并允许生物流体的过程对强烈剪应力和温度梯度高度敏感。-近年来，生物机械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，但生物机械自动化已经取得了很高的生产力，并导致了全基因组测序和分析。因此，生物机械工程界强烈希望利用微流控设备提高集成度和自动化程度，同时降低成本、劳动力和空间需求。拟议研究的主要目标是通过设计能够增强微型设备中混合的优化和控制策略来促进集成和自动化。

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.