Numerical Analysis for Magnetophoretic Separation of Blood Cells in Fluid and Magnetic Field

Abstract

In this paper, the characteristics of blood cell motion are analysed by solving a coupled electromagnetic, fluid and particle dynamics problem. The forces acting on blood cells are obtained from magnetic field and fluid field distributions, both of which are numerically calculated by the finite element method. These force consist of the magnetophoretic force, drag force, buoyancy and gravity, these are driving terms in Newton's equation for the particle motion. We propose a numerical analysis procedure to solve the coupled problem, and a micro cell separation device without a micro fabricated structure is designed. The dynamic characteristics of the cell motion are simulated. The simulation results show the proposed numerical scheme to analyse the micro particle dynamics and also show the usefulness of the designed device.