Adaptive temperature estimation in 3D single-cell dielectrophoretic traps using the Boundary Element Method

摘要

We present an adaptive method for the evaluation of the temperature increase due to Joule heating in single-cell dielectrophoretic traps. In this problem the temperature distribution in the trap can be described by a Poisson equation. The proposed algorithm produces a nearly optimal mesh for the volume integral associated with the source term, which must be calculated when using the Boundary Element Method to solve Poisson's equation. It is shown that this method reduces computation times by as much as an order of magnitude with respect to direct evaluation of the integral in a homogeneous mesh. The method presented is easily implemented and highly efficient in a wide variety of problems where the gradient of the source term is very high but it does not oscillate rapidly within the domain.