Electrokinetics in viscoelastic fluids under DC and AC electric fields

The Project aims to theoretically and experimentally describe the electrokinetic effects in viscoelastic liquids. The subject is related to microfluidic problems. This topic shows a wide area of potential applications in chemical and bioengineering: from water purification and e-ink display technologies to various lab-on-chip designs for detecting biological markers, trapping analytes, etc... They are also present in many industrial applications, e.g. in food, oil and gas, material processing, cosmetics.
Theoretical coverage of this problem is insufficient to explain all of the effects that are observed in experiments. Most mathematical models for electroosmosis and electrophoresis are dealing with Newtonian fluids (and, typically, with Stokes flow), whereas certain kind of particles (including most biological ones) change the rheology of the fluid and thus produce viscoelastic (non-Newtonian) effects.

The project aims at conducting some experiments for the primary comparison of the results with the theoretical results in order to verify the mathematical model and draft a further work plan. At the present time, the theoretical and experimental investigations are being conducted separately, and the main objective of the present project is to associate the two.