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Recently, powerful instruments for biomedical engineering research studies, including disease modeling, drug designing and nano-drug delivering, have been extremely investigated by researchers. Particularly, investigation in various microfluidics techniques and novel biomedical approaches for microfluidic-based substrate have progressed in recent years, and therefore, various cell culture platforms have been manufactured for these types of approaches. These microinstruments, known as tissue chip platforms, mimic in vivo living tissue and exhibit more physiologically similar vitro models of human tissues. Using lab-on-a-chip technologies in vitro cell culturing quickly caused in optimized systems of tissues compared to static culture. These chipsets prepare cell culture media to mimic physiological reactions and behaviors.

The authors used the application of lab chip instruments as a versatile tool for point of health-care (PHC) applications, and the authors applied a current progress in various platforms toward biochip DNA sensors as an alternative to the general bio electrochemical sensors. Basically, optical sensing is related to the intercalation between glass surfaces containing biomolecules with fluorescence and, subsequently, its reflected light that arises from the characteristics of the chemical agents. Recently, various techniques using optical fiber have progressed significantly, and researchers apply highlighted remarks and future perspectives of these kinds of platforms for PHC applications.

The authors assembled several microfluidic chips through cell culture and immune-fluorescent, as well as using microscopy measurement and image analysis for RNA sequencing. By this work, several chip assemblies were fabricated, and the application of the fluidic routing mechanism enables us to provide chip-to-chip communication with a variety of tissue-on-a-chip. By lab-on-a-chip techniques, the authors exhibited that coating the cell membrane via poly-dopamine and collagen was the best cell membrane coating due to the monolayer growth and differentiation of the cell types during the differentiation period. The authors found the artificial membrane, through coating with Collagen-A, has improved the growth of mouse podocytes cells-5 compared with the fibronectin-coated membrane.

The authors could distinguish the differences across the patient cohort when they used a collagen-coated microfluidic chip. For instance, von Willebrand factor, a blood glycoprotein that promotes hemostasis, can be identified and measured through these type-coated microfluidic chips.

This study aims to investigate the rarefaction effects on flow and thermal performances of an equivalent sand-grain roughness model for aerodynamic thrust bearing.

In this study, a model of gas lubrication thrust bearing was established by modifying the wall roughness and considering rarefaction effect. The flow and lubrication characteristics of gas film were discussed based on the equivalent sand roughness model and rarefaction effect.

The boundary slip and the surface roughness effect lead to a decrease in gas film pressure and temperature, with a maximum decrease of 39.2% and 8.4%, respectively. The vortex effect present in the gas film is closely linked to the gas film’s pressure. Slip flow decreases the vortex effect, and an increase in roughness results in the development of slip flow. The increase of roughness leads to a decrease for the static and thermal characteristics.

This work uses the rarefaction effect and the equivalent sand roughness model to investigate the lubrication characteristics of gas thrust bearing. The results help to guide the selection of the surface roughness of rotor and bearing, so as to fully control the rarefaction effect and make use of it.

This empirical study aims to investigate the erosion wear performance of two different 3D-printed materials (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene [ABS] and polylactic acid [PLA]) with various micro textures. The two different textures (prism and square) were created over the surfaces of both materials by using the 3D-printed technique.

The erosion experiments on both materials were performed by using Ducom Erosion Jet Tester. Erosion tests were performed at four different impacting velocities (15, 30, 45 and 60 m/s) with the four different particle sizes (17, 39, 63 97 µm) at the impact angles (30°–90°) for the time duration of 5, 10, 15 and 20 min. The two different textures prism and cone were used for performing the erosion experiments. Taguchi’s orthogonal L16 (mixed level) was used to reduce the number of experiments and to determine the impact of these parameters on erosion wear performance of both 3D-printed materials.

The PLA with cone texture was found to be best (against erosion) than the ABS cone and prism textures due to their high hardness (68 HV). Also, the average signal to noise (S/N) ratio for PLA and ABS was measured as 56.4 and 44.4 dB, respectively. As the value of the S/N ratio is inversely proportional to the erosion rate, the PLA has the least erosion rate as compared to the ABS. The sequence of erosion wear influencing parameters for both materials was in the following order: velocity > erodent size > texture > impact angle > time interval.

Both PLA and ABS with different micro textures for erosion testing were studied with Taguchi’s optimization method, and the erosion mechanisms are well analyzed by using scanning electron microscopy and Image J techniques.