Modaresi M A, Shirani E
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 14115-143, Tehran, Iran.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, P.O. Box 8415683111, Isfahan, Iran.
Eur Phys J Plus. 2022;137(7):846. doi: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03067-x. Epub 2022 Jul 21.
Mucociliary clearance is an important phenomenon inside the respiratory system as a first defensive mechanism against pathogens. Therefore, any assumption considered for the mucociliary clearance and affects its functionality must be validated. The present research deals with the effects of boundary conditions on the movement of upper-convected Maxwell and high viscosity Newtonian mucus layers, numerically. Furthermore, the validity of replacing the viscoelastic mucus layer with a high viscosity Newtonian layer is evaluated. The airway surface liquid layer is considered a two-layer model including non-Newtonian mucus and Newtonian periciliary layers. Four cyclic boundary conditions are imposed at the mucus-periciliary interface as the cilia movement to obtain variations of mucociliary clearance. The upper boundary of the mucus layer is also exposed to different shear stress levels including free slip, cough, and sneeze conditions. By investigation of velocity variations inside mucus and periciliary layers, it is concluded the differences between viscoelastic and Newtonian mucus are not negligible. The maximum velocity differences between the two fluids are more than 52% and 215% during cough and sneeze, respectively. The results show there is a high order of dependency between the relaxation time and the imposed boundary conditions at the mucus-periciliary interface that leads to the invalidation of replacing two fluids with each other. Moreover, the results show substituting the viscoelastic mucus with a high viscosity Newtonian one depends on the mucus-periciliary interface boundary condition. If an independent time-varying boundary condition is used, the substitution leads to an error less than 7% under different shear stress levels. However, time-varying boundary condition shows 38% and 88% differences between high viscosity Newtonian and viscoelastic mucus layers. Furthermore, neglecting the recovery stroke leads to a velocity underestimation up to 50% by substituting viscoelastic mucus with a high viscosity Newtonian one. Therefore, replacing the viscoelastic mucus with a high viscosity Newtonian one is not acceptable for numerical simulations.
黏液纤毛清除是呼吸系统内一种重要的现象,作为抵御病原体的第一道防御机制。因此,任何关于黏液纤毛清除并影响其功能的假设都必须得到验证。本研究通过数值方法探讨了边界条件对上随体麦克斯韦模型和高黏度牛顿流体黏液层运动的影响。此外,评估了用高黏度牛顿流体层替代黏弹性黏液层的有效性。气道表面液体层被视为一个两层模型,包括非牛顿黏液层和牛顿纤毛周层。在黏液 - 纤毛周界面施加四种周期性边界条件以模拟纤毛运动,从而获得黏液纤毛清除的变化情况。黏液层的上边界还受到不同剪切应力水平的作用,包括自由滑移、咳嗽和打喷嚏条件。通过研究黏液层和纤毛周层内的速度变化,得出黏弹性黏液和牛顿流体黏液之间的差异不可忽略。在咳嗽和打喷嚏时,两种流体之间的最大速度差异分别超过52% 和215%。结果表明,松弛时间与黏液 - 纤毛周界面处施加的边界条件之间存在高度相关性,这导致两种流体相互替代是无效的。此外,结果表明用高黏度牛顿流体替代黏弹性黏液取决于黏液 - 纤毛周界面的边界条件。如果使用独立的随时间变化的边界条件,在不同剪切应力水平下,这种替代导致的误差小于7%。然而,随时间变化的边界条件表明高黏度牛顿流体层和黏弹性黏液层之间存在38% 和88% 的差异。此外,忽略恢复冲程会导致用高黏度牛顿流体替代黏弹性黏液时速度低估高达50%。因此,在数值模拟中用高黏度牛顿流体替代黏弹性黏液是不可接受的。