BIOENG 104 - Biological Transport Phenomena (4 Units)
Course Overview
Summary
The transport of mass, momentum, and energy are critical to the function of living systems and the design of medical devices. Biological transport phenomena are present at a wide range of length scales: molecular, cellular, organ (whole and by functional unit), and organism. This course develops and applies scaling laws and the methods of continuum mechanics to biological transport phenomena over a range of length and time scales. The course is intended for undergraduate students who have taken a course in differential equations and an introductory course in physics. Students should be familiar with basic biology; an understanding of physiology is useful, but not assumed.
Offered Time
Prerequisites
What's next?
Choosing the course
What concentration is this course relevant to?
Topics covered
- Diffusion of mass
- Random Walk
- Fick's Law
- Stokes–Einstein and Wilkie–Chang Relations
- Steady-State 1D Diffusion in Cartesian, Cylindrical, and Spherical
- Unsteady 1D Diffusion in Semi-infinite medium, and Finite medium
- Quasi-steady Diffusion
- Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Shear in Fluids
- Navier–Stokes Equation
- Dimensional Analysis
- Stokes’ Flow
- Bernoulli’s Principle
- 1D Diffusion and Convection
- Short Contact Time Solution
- Mass Transfer Coefficients
- Co-current and Counter-current Mass Transfer
- Diffusion- vs. Reaction-Limited Adsorption
- Reaction on a Surface and Convection to a Surface
- Reaction and Diffusion in a Volume
When should I take the course?
Most bioengineering students take this course during their sophomore or junior year, though a few enroll as freshmen and some wait until senior year. The prerequisites are strict and a strong foundation in mathematics is important, as the course makes extensive use of differential equations, partial derivatives, and fluid dynamics principles. The class is mathematically intensive, and a working knowledge of physiology is also recommended to better understand problem scenarios in homework, exams, and the final project.
Workload and Tips
What is the workload and exam diffculty?
The course includes two midterms and a final project. The final project is a group poster presentation, designed to resemble a symposium. Groups of four are formed based on an interest form, and the project involves using COMSOL to design biomedical device (usually microfluidics) or simulate physical processes within the human body.
Lab instructions can sometimes be vague, but most tasks involve following the steps and running simulations. Lab sections are asynchronous, and discussion sections function as Zoom-based lab office hours. Technically, you get priority support if you’re enrolled in that specific section, but in practice the priority isn’t particularly useful.
There is one midterm and one final; both exams are hard but fair.
The diffusion chapter (covered in the first part of the course, before Midterm 1) is the most challenging. Homework during this section is very math-heavy, often requiring frequent office hour visits to check solutions. After this chapter, the assignments become more manageable. Interestingly, the midterms tend to be easier than the homework, focusing mostly on derivations of different fluid analysis scenarios.