Authors: Jose Esteban LópezAguilar Michael F Webster Alaa Hasan A AlMuslimawi Hamid Reza TamaddonJahromi Rhodri Williams Karl Hawkins Colin Askill Chin Lye Ch’ng Gwyneth Davies Phillip Ebden Keir Lewis
Publish Date: 2014/12/19
Volume: 54, Issue: 4, Pages: 287-305
Abstract
The main focus of the present computational modelling work is to determine the extensional rheological response of some model biofluids with a view to ultimately aiding experimentally based analyses and clinical practice This is accomplished in the present study through model extensional flows and rheological investigation addressing filament stretching and contraction flows and upon which significant advances are presented As such two biofluid flow systems within the human body are of current interest i respiratory disorders and sputum in the lung airways associated with filament stretching where stretchiness of mucus sputum in situ is vital with clinical focus on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD/sputum and ii bile flow in the biliary system contraction flow with clinical focus on disorders of primary sclerosis cholangitis and common bile duct narrowing Both sputum and bile biofluid systems are represented through kinetic theory rheological fluid modelling with capability to represent material structure entanglement branching and anisotropy This is practically achieved by appealing to the class of pompom differential constitutive models extracted from polymer melt physics and deployed here through a single extended pompom SXPP approximation This class of models is sufficiently rich to enable description of both network structure and rheological properties exhibiting viscoelastic response memory with strainhardening/softening and shearthinning propertiesFinancial support scholarship to JELA from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología CONACYT México Zienkiewcz College of Engineering scholarship and NHSWales Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Trust fund is gratefully acknowledged We are grateful to Dr H Matallah for his contribution in the initial coding and scoping work on the pompom stepstrain problem
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