Fast and accurate integral equation methods with applications in microfluidics

Abstract: This thesis is concerned with computational methods for fluid flows on the microscale, also known as microfluidics. This is motivated by current research in biological physics and miniaturization technology, where there is a need to understand complex flows involving microscale structures. Numerical simulations are an important tool for doing this.The first, and smaller, part of the thesis presents a numerical method for simulating multiphase flows involving insoluble surfactants and moving contact lines. The method is based on an interface decomposition resulting in local, Eulerian grid representations. This provides a natural setting for solving the PDE governing the surfactant concentration on the interface.The second, and larger, part of the thesis is concerned with a framework for simulating large systems of rigid particles in three-dimensional, periodic viscous flow using a boundary integral formulation. This framework can solve the underlying flow equations to high accuracy, due to the accurate nature of surface quadrature. It is also fast, due to the natural coupling between boundary integral methods and fast summation methods.The development of the boundary integral framework spans several different fields of numerical analysis. For fast computations of large systems, a fast Ewald summation method known as Spectral Ewald is adapted to work with the Stokes double layer potential. For accurate numerical integration, a method known as Quadrature by Expansion is developed for this same potential, and also accelerated through a scheme based on geometrical symmetries. To better understand the errors accompanying this quadrature method, an error analysis based on contour integration and calculus of residues is carried out, resulting in highly accurate error estimates.