TITLE:
A Laminar Flow Model for Mucous Gel Transport in a Cough Machine Simulating Trachea: Effect of Surfactant as a Sol Phase Layer
AUTHORS:
Dipak Kumar Satpathi, Addepalli Ramu
KEYWORDS:
Mucous Gel; Sol Phase; Surfactant; Laminar Flow; Trachea; Voigt Element
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.3 No.4,
July
22,
2013
ABSTRACT:
In this paper, a planar three layer quasisteady laminar flow model is proposed in a cough machine which simulates mucous gel transport in model trachea due to mild forced expiration. The flow is governed by the time dependent pressure gradient generated in trachea due to mild forced expiration. Mucous gel is represented by a viscoelastic Voigt element whereas sol phase fluid and air are considered as Newtonian fluids. For fixed airflow rate, it is shown that when the viscosity of mucous gel is small, mucous gel transport decreases as the elastic modulus increases. However, elastic modulus has negligible effect on large gel viscosity. It is also shown that for fixed airflow rate and fixed airway dimension, mucous gel transport increases with the thickness of sol phase fluid and this increase is further enhanced as the viscosity of sol phase fluid decreases. The effect of surfactant is studied by considering sol phase as surfactant layer which causes slip at the wall and interface of sol phase and mucous gel. It is found that in the presence of surfactant mucous gel transport is enhanced.