FSI and NON-FSI Investigations on Diagonal Functionally-Graded Temperature-Sensitive Hydrogel Microvalve

Sensitive hydrogel beams can be utilized for various purposes, microvalves, smart actuators and sensors, for instance. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of a diagonal microvalve employed in a microchannel by considering both Fluid–Structure-Interaction (FSI) and non-FSI approaches. The microvalve is made of Functionally Graded (FG) Temperature-Sensitive hydrogel in which the amount of cross-linking density varies through the thickness direction, linearly or exponentially. To investigate the influences of grading, two homogenous hydrogel beams with various values of cross-linking density are also studied. Three software have been utilized to conduct FSI and non-FSI simulations; FLUENT as regards fluid domain investigation, ABAQUS for finite element analysis, and MpCCI to couple the two previous simulation domains. Providing the outcomes and comparing them shows that the effects of the fluid flow are meaningful and cannot be neglected. Also, we investigate the influences of some parameters on the behavior of the microvalve, such as the angle, inlet pressure, and the geometry of the beam.