Premium
Numerical simulation of orbitally shaken viscous fluids with free surface
Author(s) -
Discacciati Marco,
Hacker David,
Quarteroni Alfio,
Quinodoz Samuel,
Tissot Stéphanie,
Wurm Florian M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in fluids
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1097-0363
pISSN - 0271-2091
DOI - 10.1002/fld.3658
Subject(s) - free surface , mixing (physics) , mechanics , computational fluid dynamics , computer simulation , finite element method , viscous liquid , materials science , classical mechanics , physics , thermodynamics , quantum mechanics
SUMMARY Orbitally shaken bioreactors are an emerging alternative to stirred‐tank bioreactors for large‐scale mammalian cell culture, but their fluid dynamics is still not well defined. Among the theoretical and practical issues that remain to be resolved, the characterization of the liquid free surface during orbital shaking remains a major challenge because it is an essential aspect of gas transfer and mixing in these reactors. To simulate the fluid behavior and the free surface shape, we developed a numerical method based on the finite element framework. We found that the large density ratio between the liquid and the gas phases induced unphysical results for the free surface shape. We therefore devised a new pressure correction scheme to deal with large density ratios. The simulations operated with this new scheme gave values of wave amplitude similar to the ones measured experimentally. These simulations were used to calculate the shear stress and to study the mixing principle in orbitally shaken bioreactors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.