porousMicroTransport: A versatile finite-volume toolbox for numerical prototyping of paper-based microfluidic devices

GABRIEL S. GERLERO; CLAUDIO L. A. BERLI; PABLO A. KLER

Buenos Aires

Congreso; III Brazil-Argentine Microfluidics Congress - VI Congreso de Microfluídica Argentina; 2022

CNEA - CONICET - AGENCIA

porousMicroTransport is a set of tools for numerical simulation aimed at the study and design of paper-based micro￿uidic devices. The software toolbox is novel in its orientation towards flow in paper-like porous media and its ability to deal with several phenomena of interest at once. Such phenomena include solvent ￿ow in both saturated and unsaturated regimes, motion of any number of diluted species via the e￿ects of advection, molecular di￿usion and mechanical dispersion, as well as chemical reactions between the species. Notably, the implementations of unsaturated flow in porousMicroTransport can invoke equations and constitutive models that target capillary flow in paper media in particular, which offer both versatility and computational efficiency. porousMicroTransport is available as open source software, built on top of the OpenFOAM® finite-volume multiphysics simulation platform. Other noteworthy features include automatic timestep management in simulations and the use of an automated test suite for validation. We introduce the toolbox to the microfluidics community, and show its potential application in the prototyping of paper-based microfluidic devices through the numerical recreation of an experimental example from the literature.