Characterisation of stresses on microcarriers in a stirred bioreactor

Abstract

A computational fluid dynamics model for the flow of culture in a Corning™ spinner-flask stirred bioreactor has been used to characterise stresses experienced by microcarriers immersed in the fluid. Validation of the turbulent flow using experimental Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) found advanced Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to be superior to Unsteady Reynolds averaging (URANS) modelling as a computational strategy for accurately capturing instantaneous velocity fluctuations of the types observed in the experiments. The simulations demonstrated that stress exposures experienced by microcarriers were highest during impeller start-up. After start-up, microcarriers experienced elevated levels o..