archives@tulane.edu / Acoustic droplet vaporization (ADV) is an attractive alternative to traditional hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatments. ADV involves injecting microdroplets into the bloodstream which then accumulate in and around the tumor’s vasculature. Once accumulated, high-power ultrasound is used to vaporize the microdroplets into larger perfluoropentane gas microbubbles which occlude blood flow and induce necrosis of the tumor without harming healthy tissue like traditional HCC treatments. This study aims to optimize ADV treatment by improving the shell composition and surface architecture of microdroplets while ensuring the treatment remains safe. In order to ensure the treatment is as effective as possible, the microdroplets must have powerful binding capabilities, guaranteeing maximum microdroplet accumulation and treatment efficacy. The binding capabilities of three microdroplet shell compositions, created by adjusting the molar percentages of the three lipids found in the shell, were investigated and found to all have equal binding abilities. The surface architecture of these microdroplets were also altered to maximise binding capabilities. Microdroplets can have either an exposed-ligand or buried-ligand surface architecture. In microdroplets with a buried-ligand surface architecture, the attached tumor-targeting ligands are hidden within a layer of longer lipid chains which allow the microdroplets to evade the immune system and circulate within the bloodstream longer, increasing treatment efficacy. It was found that microdroplets with a buried-ligand surface architecture do not have comparable binding capabilities to microdroplets with an exposed-ligand surface architecture and are therefore not a viable alternative for use in ADV. Finally, the velocity required to dislodge perfluoropentane gas microbubbles was explored to determine if the gas microbubbles can remain adhered to the tumor’s vasculature to create a strong occlusion. Since perfluoropentane gas microbubbles occlude blood flow it is imperative that the microbubbles remain in the tumor’s vasculature and do not dislodge and accumulate in other parts of the body’s vasculature. By measuring the velocity and calculating the force necessary for dislodgement and comparing those values to those found in capillaries it was concluded that the perfluoropentane gas microbubbles can withstand the force of blood flow and remain lodged in capillaries. / 1 / Chloe Celingant-Copie

The evaporation of droplet containing insoluble particles has grown into an active area of research due to the needs for nanofluids for applications in heat transfer, combustion, and manufacturing desired micro/nano particles in the pharmaceutical industry. The evaporation of droplets containing particles involves complicated multiphase heat and mass transport. The evaporation process consists of two stages: the first stage consists of evaporation until a shell of particle forms or when the solid to liquid ratio is sufficiently large and the second stage, where the droplet size is commonly assumed to be unchanged. The dissertation investigates the evaporation kinetics in the first stage. An experimental setup based on electrodynamic balance (EDB) is built to allow the observation of evaporation of a free standing micro size droplet. Besides experimental design, a novel theoretical model is developed to first describe the morphological evolution process in the absence of internal convection. The model accounts for the effect of particles at the droplet surface on the diffusion of liquid vapor. The gradually increasing particle number at the droplet surface reduces the area for evaporation, leading to reduction in evaporation rate in the first drying stage, contrary to previous assumptions. The evaporation in the first stage is controlled by Pe (defined as the ratio of droplet evaporation rate to the particle diffusion rate) and particle properties such as wettability. For large values of Pe, the particles concentration is high near the droplet surface, leading to the change of evaporation rate. For small values of Pe, the effect of particles on the evaporation rate of droplet in the first drying stage is small because particles are allowed sufficient time to redistribute within the droplet. The model analysis also reveals that particle wettability is an important factor affecting the first drying stage. For hydrophilic particles, the contact angle of the particles at the droplet surface is small, leading to small change of evaporation in the first stage. For the hydrophobic particles that have large contact angles, the change of evaporation rate in the first drying stage is larger. The evaporation model that accounts for the internal convection is also used to describe the evaporation process. In this model, the evaporation behavior during the first stage is controlled by the particle mobility, initial particle concentration, and droplet recession/evaporation rate. For particles with high mobility, the particle distribution within the droplet tends to be smooth. The effect of convection flow on the particles distribution becomes stronger as particle mobility decreases. Once the particles mobility is decreased to a limit at which the surface particle density is only controlled by the internal flow and the evaporation process is independent of the particles mobility. For a given internal flow field and a specific particles mobility, the duration of the first stage and the final dry particle size are both controlled by the initial particle concentration. A smaller/larger initial particle concentration results in a longer/shorter first stage and smaller/larger dry particle.

The first step on the way to understanding the complicated dynamics of spray is to study the behavior of isolated droplets. In many industrial and natural processes such as turbulent combustion, agricultural sprays, spray cooler, falling raindrops and cloud evolution the droplet is subjected to a chaotic unsteady external flow field. The interaction between the liquid and gaseous phases results in very intricate droplet dynamics like capillary instabilities, atomization, droplet collision and coalescence and vaporization, to name a few. In this dissertation, the focus is on shape oscillations, atomization and vaporization dynamics of pendant and sessile droplets. A droplet residing on a substrate which vibrates vertically at ultrasonic frequency will exhibit different modes of shape oscillation. The competition between capillary forces and inertia forces is basically responsible for these oscillations. However, when an acoustic force field is introduced asymmetrically around the droplet, we discover with the help of ultra high-speed imaging, a new droplet spreading phase. This new method of droplet manipulation could nd application in micro fluidics and lab-on-a-chip systems. By lading the droplet with nanoparticles, the spreading rate can be easily controlled. The spreading phase is followed by an atomization phase where surface ligaments grow to disintegrate into daughter droplets; the intensity of atomization is found to decrease with increase in fluid viscosity. The ability to control atomization characteristics of droplets by lading them with nanoparticles is a powerful technique that may be implemented in spray coolers and combustors to control the spray characteristics or combustion efficiency. Both the spreading and ligament dynamics have been theoretically simulated and the physics behind the observed trends is explained. The growth rate of the ligaments is found to be governed by Weber number modified to include the acoustic pressure level of the standing wave. The frequency of ligament breakup is found to decrease with fluid viscosity and this observation is adequately supported by a theory developed based on the evolution crater on the droplet surface. Turning now to the pendant droplets, by decomposing the droplet shape into Legendre modes, the shape oscillations exhibited by a droplet hanging from the junction of cross-wire placed at the center of an air jet is studied. Both high-speed imaging and hot-wire anemometry are employed. The driving force of oscillation of droplets subjected to the air jet is proved to be the inherent pressure fluctuations in the jet. The effect of surface tension, viscosity and Reynolds number on the shape oscillation level has been examined. The first experimental evidence of viscous attenuation of lower frequencies in a particular mode in glycerol/water mixture is reported. A theoretical model was developed to simulate the droplet shape oscillations induced by different ambient flow fields like pulsatile flow, vortical flow and flow with broadband energy spectrum. The time of interaction of the droplet with an eddy in the flow is found to be very crucial in determining the amplitude of oscillation of the droplet. The shorter the interaction time, the higher are the chances of the droplet oscillation being pushed into resonance. Finally, the heat transfer and droplet regression dynamics of pendant droplets in a hot air stream of various chemical compositions (like conventional fuels, alternative fuels and nanosuspensions) have been experimentally analyzed using high speed imaging. The droplet is deployed at the junction of cross-wire at the centre of a vertical air jet. A hybrid timescale has been proposed which incorporates the effects of latent heat of vaporization, saturation vapor pressure and thermal diffusivity. This timescale in essence encapsulates the different parameters that influence the droplet vaporization rate. The analysis further permitted the evaluation of the effect of various parameters such as surrounding temperature, Reynolds number, far-field vapor presence, impurity content and agglomeration dynamics (nanosuspensions) in the droplet.

A computer numerical control (CNC) apparatus was used to perform droplet centrifugation, droplet DNA extraction, and rapid droplet thermocycling on a single superhydrophobic surface and a multi-chambered PCB heater. Droplets were manipulated using "wire-guided" method (a pipette tip was used in this study). This methodology can be easily adapted to existing commercial robotic pipetting system, while demonstrated added capabilities such as vibrational mixing, high-speed centrifuging of droplets, simple DNA extraction utilizing the hydrophobicity difference between the tip and the superhydrophobic surface, and rapid thermocycling with a moving droplet, all with wire-guided droplet manipulations on a superhydrophobic surface and a multi-chambered PCB heater (i.e., not on a 96-well plate). Serial dilutions were demonstrated for diluting sample matrix. Centrifuging was demonstrated by rotating a 10 muL droplet at 2300 round per minute, concentrating E. coli by more than 3-fold within 3min. DNA extraction was demonstrated from E. coli sample utilizing the disposable pipette tip to cleverly attract the extracted DNA from the droplet residing on a superhydrophobic surface, which took less than 10min. Following extraction, the 1500bp sequence of Peptidase D from E. coli was amplified using rapid droplet thermocycling, which took 10min for 30cycles. The total assay time was 23min, including droplet centrifugation, droplet DNA extraction and rapid droplet thermocycling. Evaporation from of 10 muL droplets was not significant during these procedures, since the longest time exposure to air and the vibrations was less than 5min (during DNA extraction). The results of these sequentially executed processes were analyzed using gel electrophoresis. Thus, this work demonstrates the adaptability of the system to replace many common laboratory tasks on a single platform (through re-programmability), in rapid succession (using droplets), and with a high level of accuracy and automation.

The effect of superhydrophobicity on liquid water impingement on a flat horizontal surface was explored. The surfaces combined a hydrophobic surface chemistry with a patterned microstucture in order to produce high contact angles with water. Three sets of experiments were performed, one for jet impingement and two for droplet impingement, which advance previous work in characterizing the interaction of water and superhydrophobic surfaces.Jet impingement experiments were performed to characterize a transitional regime between an unsubmerged and a completely submerged superhydrophobic surface by varying an imposed downstream depth. For low downstream depths, the surface remained unsubmerged and displayed only break up of the thin film, while at high downstream depths, the surface was completely submerged and only a hydraulic jump occurred. Within the transition, the surface was partially submerged and both thin film breakup and a hydraulic jump were observed. Experiments were performed for three Reynolds numbers, Re, ranging from 1.9 x 104 to 2.2 x 104 (based on the volume flow rate). For all Re, the transition was characterized by a reduction in the hydraulic jump radius as downstream depth increased. Also, as Re increased, the downstream depths over which the transition occurred was greater. When a droplet impinges on a surface covered with a liquid film, a thin liquid wall, or crown, forms and propagates outward. Here a comparison of this crown dynamic was made for smooth hydrophilic surfaces and superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces patterned with post or rib microfeatures. Due to the high contact angle of the SH surfaces, a relatively thick film (h ≈ 5 mm) of water was required to maintain a film. This resulted in negligible differences between the surfaces utilized. Droplet train impingement on the same post and rib SH surfaces was also investigated. When each individual droplet impinged on the surface, a crown formed which spread out radially until reaching a semi-stable or regularly oscillating breakup diameter. At this point, the water would either build up or breakup into droplets or filaments and then continue radially outward. In some cases the crown would break up, causing splashing. A comparison to previous experiments on hydrophilic surfaces shows a distinct difference in splashing at low frequency. The breakup diameter was measured over a Weber number range of 72-2800. The data was collapsed as a function of a combination of the Reynolds number (Re), Capillary number (Ca), and Strouhal number (St), resulting in Re0.7CaSt. The rib SH surface displayed an elongated breakup due to the anisotropic surface features. The breakup diameter for the droplet train was compared to the breakup diameter which has been shown to occur with a jet impinging on a SH surface.

This paper presents the results of an ongoing effort to develop a direct solder bumping process for electronics packaging. The proposed process entails delivering molten droplets onto specific locations on electronic devices to form solder bumps. This study is focused on investigating droplet deposition behaviors that affect solder bump characteristics such as final bump volume, shape, and adhesion strength. The occurrence of droplet bouncing has a strong influence on these characteristics. The potential for a droplet to bounce in the absence of solidification was modeled in discrete stages based on energy conservation. Wetting and target surface roughness were identified as the critical parameters affecting bouncing. The experimental results showed that improvements in wetting and decreases in surface roughness retard bouncing. These observations agreed well with the trends predicted by the energy conservation based model. The knowledge acquired in this study is expected to contribute to the development of an efficient solder bumping process. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

No description available.

Droplet splatter dynamics is an important study in the field of forensics since a crime event can produce many blood stains. Understanding the origins of the blood stains from pure observations is very difficult because much of the information about the impact is lost. A theoretical model is therefore needed to better understand the dynamics of droplet impact and splatter. We chose to explore a fluid modelling method known as Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to determine whether it is capable of modelling droplet splatter accurately. Specifically, we chose to investigate an SPH version of a non-Newtonian pressure correction method with surface tension. Three experiments were performed to analyze the different aspects of SPH. From the results of the experiments, we concluded that this method can produce stable simulations if an artificial viscosity model is included, a third-order polynomial kernel is used and the pressure boundary condition on surface particles are non-zero. / UOIT

This study presents continued development of the Nenes and Seinfeld (2003) cloud droplet activation parameterization. First, we expanded the formulation to i) allow for a lognormal representation of aerosol size distribution, and, ii) include a size-dependant mass transfer coefficient for the growth of water droplets to accommodate the effect of size (and potentially organic films) on the droplet growth rate. The performance of the new scheme is evaluated by comparing the parameterized cloud droplet number concentration with that of a detailed numerical activation cloud parcel model. The resulting modified parameterization robustly and closely tracks the parcel model simulations, even for low values of the accommodation coefficient (average error 4.11.3%). The modifications to include the effect of accommodation coefficient do not increase the computational cost but substantially improves the parameterization performance. This work offers a robust, computationally efficient and first-principles approach for directly linking complex chemical effects (e.g., surface tension depression, changes in water vapor accommodation, solute contribution from partial solubility) on aerosol activation within a global climate modeling framework.

Bloodstain pattern analysis is used in the investigation of a crime scene to infer the impact velocity and size of an impacting droplet and from these, the droplet’s point and cause of origin. The final pattern is the result of complex fluid dynamic processes involved in the impact and spreading of a blood drop on a surface with variable surface properties such as wettability and porosity. An experiment has been designed to study these processes and the resulting patterns for the case of a single Newtonian droplet impacting an inclined surface with variable roughness and wetting properties. An experimental apparatus, including a droplet generator, has been designed to produce droplets on-demand, and that impact an interchangeable surface. In addition, a blood-simulant liquid has been developed as a replacement for performing tests with real blood. With this apparatus and blood simulant, fluid dynamics concepts, such as contact line motion and wetting behavior are examined in the context of parameters of interest to the forensics community. These include eccentricity, spread factor and the number of spines formed on impact. The effect of varying dimensionless parameters including Reynolds number, Weber number and Laplace number, the angle of impact and surface properties is examined. Correlations are developed for predicting conditions at the point of impact from those observed later, as would be available to a forensics examiner, and the accuracy of the predictions developed in this thesis are evaluated.