WANG, Chi-Hwa

Associate Professor

PhD (Chem. Eng.) Princeton, 1995
MA (Chem. Eng.) Princeton, 1993
MSc (Biomedical Eng.) Johns Hopkins, 1991
BSc (Chem. Eng.) Natn' l Taiwan, 1987

Contact information
Blk E5, 4 Engineering Drive 4, #02-31, Singapore 117576
Tel: (65) 6516 5079    Fax: (65) 6779 1936
Email: chewch@nus.edu.sg

Fellow, Singapore-MIT Alliance
Research Group Home Page

RESEARCH

Solid/Liquid Separation

Cake filtration has a variety of applications in the chemical industry such as solid-liquid separation. In order to obtain the physical properties of the filter cake, a compression-permeability cell (C-P Cell) can be used to examine the constitutive relationships between the solid compressive stresses, porosity and the specific filtration resistance. A physical model is proposed to study the transient distribution of stresses, strains and void ratios in the confined cake formed in a C-P Cell, under different levels of axial load. The effect of side-wall friction is investigated and the results are compared with the data from the C-P cell experiments.

Drug Delivery Systems
(Collaborator: Assoc. Prof. T. Lee, Department of Surgery, NUS)

The treatment of malignant brain tumours can be achieved by the systemic administration of chemotherapeutic agents and also by the direct surgical implantation of polymers as drug carriers. The second approach has the potential to obviate the need for drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier and deliver them directly to the site of pathology, hence minimising the systemic toxicity associated with the first approach. The objective for this project is to develop a general simulation platform that can be directly used for the on-line optimisation of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiotherapy for tumour patients. The proposed work has various applications in the treatment of tumours in brain, liver, and other organs. Concurrently, we are working on the development of controlled release devices for various anti-cancer drugs and biomolecules.

Flow and Dynamics of Granular Materials

The central theme of research in this field is the development and testing of continuum models for the rheological behaviour of granular materials. We are carrying out a series of studies in which instabilities arising from a variety of granular flow problems are analysed using continuum rheological models and particle dynamics simulations. The possibility of capturing these instabilities consistent with experimental data is examined. The objectives of the analysis are to determine the possible occurrence of clustering instabilities, and to bring forth the factors that drive these instabilities.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

F. Y. M. Goh, H. L. Kong and C. H. Wang, "On the Delivery of Doxorubicin to Hepatoma", Pharmaceutical Research, 18, 761 (2001).

C. H. Wang and Z. Tong, "On the Density Waves Developed in Gravity Channel Flows of Granular Materials", Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 435, 217 (2001).

H. M. Wong, J. Wang and C. H. Wang, "In Vitro Sustained Release of Immunoglobulin G from Biodegradable Microspheres", I & EC Research, 40, 933 (2001).

J. S. Hua and C. H. Wang, "Numerical Simulation of Bubble-driven Liquid Flows", Chemical Engineering Science, 55, 261 (2000).

K. Sengothi, P. C. Tan, J. Wang, T. Lee, E. T. Kang and C. H. Wang, "Biocompatibility of Electroactive Polymers in Tissues", Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, 52, 467 (2000).