Modeling performance of a two-dimensional capsule in a microchannel flow: long-term lateral migration

The long-term lateral migration of a two-dimensional elastic capsule in a microchannel is studied numerically in this paper. The numerical method combines a finite volume technique for solving the fluid problem with a front tracking technique for capturing and tracking the capsule membrane. The capsule is modeled as a liquid medium enclosed by a thin membrane which has linear elastic properties. The capsule, whose initial shape is circle and which starts from a near-center position or a near-wall position, experiences tilting and membrane tank-treading, and migrates laterally when moving along the surrounding flow. The lateral migration demonstrates the existence of lift effect of surrounding flow on moving capsule. Before capsule approaches to the microchannel centerline closely, lower membrane dilation modulus and lower viscosity ratio tend to result in faster lateral migration. The initial position also influences the performance behavior of capsule, despite the lateral migration of capsule is a quasisteady process. Small difference in capsule behavior when capsule is not near to the microchannel centerline might lead to significant difference in capsule behavior when capsule approaches closely to the centerline. When capsules are near to microchannel wall, the effect of the wall on capsule behavior might dominate, leading to relatively faster lateral migration. When capsules are not far from microchannel centerline, the effect of the nonlinearity of Poiseuille flow might dominate, resulting in relatively slower lateral movement. When capsules are located closely to the centerline, they behave differently, where the reason still remains poorly understood and it will be one of our future studies. The comparison between the capsule behavior from the present simulation and that by the migration law proposed by Coupier [Phys. Fluids 20, 111702 (2008)] shows that the behavioral agreement for near-wall capsule is better than that for near-center capsule, and the best agreement occurs to the near-wall capsule with intermediate membrane dilation modulus and highest viscosity ratio.