The design of microfluidic devices is a cumbersome and tedious process that can be significantly improved by simulation. Methods based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are considered state-of-the-art, but require extensive compute time - oftentimes limiting the size of microfluidic devices that can be simulated. Simulation methods that abstract the underlying physics on a higher level generally provide results instantly, but the fidelity of these methods is usually worse. In this work, a simulation method that accelerates CFD simulations by exploiting simulation methods on higher levels of abstraction is proposed. Case studies confirm that the proposed method accelerates CFD simulations by multiple factors (often several orders of magnitude) while maintaining the fidelity of CFD simulations.

翻译：微流控器件的设计是一个繁琐且耗时的过程，而仿真技术可显著改善这一现状。基于计算流体动力学（CFD）的方法被视为当前最先进的技术，但需要大量计算时间——这往往限制了可仿真的微流控器件规模。对底层物理机制进行更高层级抽象仿真的方法通常能即时获得结果，但此类方法的保真度通常较差。本文提出了一种利用更高抽象层级仿真方法来加速CFD仿真的技术。案例研究表明，该方法在保持CFD仿真保真度的同时，可实现倍数级（常达数个数量级）的加速效果。