Controllability Analysis of Multi-Modal Acoustic Particle Manipulation in One-Dimensional Standing Waves

Abstract

Acoustic manipulation in microfluidic devices enables contactless handling of biological cells for Lab-on-Chip applications. This paper analyzes the controllability of multi-particle systems in a one-dimensional acoustic standing wave system using multi-modal actuation. By modeling the system as a nonlinear control system, we analyze its global and local controllability, quantifying these properties in terms of mode numbers. Our results show that sufficient modes enable dense reachability sets, while mode mixing with 10 modes grants a strict notion of controllability to 80\% of the state space in a two-particle system. These findings offer theoretical insights for designing acoustic manipulation algorithms, supporting efficient control in biomedical applications.