Lateral migration of electrospun hydrogel nanofilaments in an oscillatory flow

PLoS One. 2017 Nov 15;12(11):e0187815. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187815. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

The recent progress in bioengineering has created great interest in the dynamics and manipulation of long, deformable macromolecules interacting with fluid flow. We report experimental data on the cross-flow migration, bending, and buckling of extremely deformable hydrogel nanofilaments conveyed by an oscillatory flow into a microchannel. The changes in migration velocity and filament orientation are related to the flow velocity and the filament's initial position, deformation, and length. The observed migration dynamics of hydrogel filaments qualitatively confirms the validity of the previously developed worm-like bead-chain hydrodynamic model. The experimental data collected may help to verify the role of hydrodynamic interactions in molecular simulations of long molecular chains dynamics.

MeSH terms

  • Dimethylpolysiloxanes / chemistry
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Hydrogels*
  • Physical Phenomena*

Substances

  • Dimethylpolysiloxanes
  • Hydrogels
  • baysilon

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Polish National Science Center (NCN), grant no. 2015/17/N/ST8/02012. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.