Detalhes do Documento

Currently, biomedical microdevices are becoming one of the most promising tools for the diagnostic and treatment of several diseases, such as diabetes, malaria and cancer. Hence, it is increasingly important to investigate the rheological behaviour of physiological fluids in microchannels in order to make use on the physics of microfluidics to either develop new lab-on-chip devices and to optimize the design of existent biomicrofluidics chips. The main objective of this study is to investigate the flow behaviour of two different physiological fluids frequently used in biomedical microdevices. The working fluids used in this study were physiological saline (PS) and dextran 40 (Dx40) containing about 6% of sheep red blood cells (RBCs), respectively. By using a syringe pump and a camera it was possible to measure qualitatively the flow behaviour within a horizontal capillary.