Effect of Cilia Beat Frequency on Mucociliary Clearance
Background: The airway surface liquid (ASL), which is a fluid layer coating the interior epithelial surface of the bronchi and bronchiolesis, plays an important defensive role against foreign particles and chemicals entering lungs. Objective: Numerical investigation has been employed to solve two...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Shiraz University of Medical Sciences
2016-12-01
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| Series: | Journal of Biomedical Physics and Engineering |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.jbpe.org/Journal_OJS/JBPE/index.php/jbpe/article/view/381/300 |
| Summary: | Background: The airway surface liquid (ASL), which is a fluid layer coating the
interior epithelial surface of the bronchi and bronchiolesis, plays an important defensive
role against foreign particles and chemicals entering lungs.
Objective: Numerical investigation has been employed to solve two-layer model
consisting of mucus layer as a viscoelastic fluid and periciliary liquid layer as a Newtonian
fluid to study the effects of cilia beat frequency (CBF) at various amounts of
mucus properties on muco-ciliary transport problem.
Methods: Hybrid finite difference-lattice Boltzmann-method (FB-LBM) has been
used to solve the momentum equations and to simulate cilia forces, and also the PCLmucus
interface more accurately, immersed boundary method (IBM) has been employed.
The main contribution of the current study is to use an Oldroyd-B model as the
constitutive equation of mucus.
Results: Our results show that increasing CBF and decreasing mucus viscosity
ratio have great effects on mucus flow, but the effect of viscosity ratio is more significant.
The results also illustrate that the relation between cilia beat frequency and
mean mucus velocity is almost linear and it has similar behavior at different values of
viscosity ratio.
Conclusion: Numerical investigation based on hybrid IB-FD-LBM has been used
to study the effect of CBF at various mounts of mucus viscosity ratio on the muco-ciliary
clearance. The results showed that the effect of viscosity ratio on the muco-ciliary
transport process is more significant compared with CBF. |
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| ISSN: | 2251-7200 2251-7200 |