New insight into air flow distribution in alveoli based on air- and saline-filled lungs
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RESEARCH PAPER
New insight into air flow distribution in alveoli based on air‑ and saline‑filled lungs Jun Dong1 · Yue Yang1 · Yonggang Zhu1 Received: 11 April 2020 / Accepted: 7 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Understanding flow distributions in human lungs has attracted significant attention since the last few decades. However, there are still large discrepancies between different studies in the distribution of air flow into alveoli at different generations of bifurcation. In this study, a new method has been developed to calculate expansion ratio of alveoli and ratio of alveolar to ductal flow rate at different generations for air- and saline-filled lungs. The effects of alveolar number, breathing period, lung tidal volume, and surface tension are examined. It is found that the expansion ratio of alveoli varies significantly at different generations in the saline-filled lungs. For the air-filled lung, the expansion ratio of individual alveolus remains constant for different generations. The current study provides new data on the flow rate ratios which is critical for understanding flow distributions and flow behaviors in alveoli. Surface tension in alveoli and alveolar number has obvious effects on the value of flow ratio. The current study sheds new light into the flow behavior in lungs and lays the foundation for detailed study on flow and particle transport characteristics in human lungs. Keywords Alveoli · Expansion ratio · Flow distribution · Alveolar to ductal flow ratio · Surface tension
1 Introduction Lung is an important organ in human bodies that inhales air to supply oxygen and exhales generated gases such as carbon dioxide. With the air flow, lung can also inhale organisms, dust, aerosol-based drugs, etc. The transport and deposition of these micro- to nanosized particles in lungs have an important impact on human health. For example, long-term exposure to particulate contaminants and toxic aerosols is recognized as a cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (including bronchitis and emphysema), asthma, lung cancer, even with diseases such as the respiratory tract, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and liver cancer (Anderson et al. 2012; Chen et al. 2016; Ferkol and Schraufnagel 2014; Hogan and Tata 2019; Kim et al. 2015). On the other hand, Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-020-02377-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Yonggang Zhu [email protected] 1
School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, China
the effective delivery of aerosol-based drugs with air inhalation into lungs is also important for the treatment of diseases (Hofemeier et al. 2014; Kleinstreuer et al. 2008; Tsuda et al. 2008). Furthermore, the understanding of behavior of air flow and particle transport can provide useful data for the development of lung disease model, e.g. artificial lung chi
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