Numerical Investigation of Quasi-sessile Droplet Absorption into Wound Dressing Capillaries

Manolia Andredaki, Anastasios Georgoulas, Marco Marengo

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The key concept in wound dressing design and development is the fact that keeping a wound moist accelerates healing. Therefore, the selection of the appropriate wound dressing type is vital. The absorption of wound exudate by wound dressings can be considered as a microfluidic phenomenon that can be investigated either by performing high resolution laboratory experiments or by utilizing high resolution Computational Fluid Dynamics numerical simulations. As an initial step, in the present paper, the effects of the pore size (wound dressing porosity), the liquid (wound exudate) viscosity, and the initial droplet diameter are numerically investigated using a simplified analog of the phenomenon that consists of a quasi-sessile droplet being absorbed by a single cylindrical pore. For this purpose, an enhanced Volume Of Fluid model, developed in the general context of OpenFOAM, is validated and applied. It is found that distinct droplet absorption rates exist with specific relationships derived using best-fit lines that can predict the absorption rates for particular values of pore size and liquid viscosity. For the examined Eo and Oh number ranges (0.0015 < Eo < 0.15 and 0.0035 < Oh < 0.095), these distinct droplet absorption rates are directly linked with four different droplet evolution regimes that are grouped in a well-defined flow map. Finally, it is shown that the resulting liquid absorption rates are not significantly affected by the initial droplet diameter and that an appropriate wound dressing porosity can be selected by an estimation of the wound exudate physical properties.

Original languageEnglish
Article number092112
JournalPhysics of Fluids
Volume32
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in M. Andredaki, A. Georgoulas, and M. Marengo, Numerical investigation of quasi-sessile droplet absorption into wound dressing capillaries, Physics of Fluids 32:9 and may be found at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0021828

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Numerical Investigation of Quasi-sessile Droplet Absorption into Wound Dressing Capillaries'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this