Large particle detachment in a microchannel

In the present work, an experimental technique was developed to determine the fluid velocity required to detach a particle from the bottom of a microchannel whose smallest dimension is close to the dimension of the particle. In addition, the effect of particle diameter on the detachment velocity in a fixed channel size was investigated by taking spheres of various dimensions and measuring the detachment velocity for each particle size. Finally, a theoretical model was developed based on a force balance approach to validate the experimental results --Abstract, page iii