SSE Talk | Hydrodynamics of Poroelastic Hydrogels

Dear all,

You are cordially invited to an academic seminar to be delivered by Zelai XU on July 2 (Sunday). Please find the details as follows.

Seminar Information

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Topic: Hydrodynamics of Poroelastic Hydrogels

Time & Date: 10:30-11:30 AM, July 2 (Sunday)

Venue: Room 207, Cheng Dao Building

Speaker: Zelai XU, The University of British Columbia

Host: Prof. Shihua GONG, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Abstract: 

Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks swollen with an aqueous solvent, and play central roles in biomicrofluidic devices. In the applications, the gel is often in contact with a flowing fluid, thus setting up a fluid-hydrogel two-phase system. To model such a system, we treat the hydrogel as a poroelastic material consisting of an elastic polymer network and a Newtonian solvent. We propose the boundary conditions on the interface between the gel and a pure fluid phase, which satisfies a dissipative energy law. Tracking the gel-fluid interface by an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eularian method, we solve the equations using the finite element method. With the poroelastic model, two realistic problems have been investigated. First, we investigated theoretically the one-dimensional compression of a hydrogel layer by a uniform fluid flow normal to the gel surface. Interestingly, we discovered a hysteresis when the upstream pressure increases gradually. Second, the model is applied to explain the mechanism of albuminuria which is a symptom of various kidney diseases. 

Biography

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Zelai Xu is a Ph.D. candidate at The University of British Columbia, supervised by Prof. James J. Feng. He accomplished his B.S. at Lanzhou University and M.Eng at the University of Science and Technology of China. His main research interest is numerical analysis of multiphase and interfacial fluid dynamics.

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