Steady Displacement of Long Gas Bubbles in Channels and Tubes Filled by a Bingham Fluid

The yielding behaviour of human mucus

Mucus is a viscoelastic material with non-linear rheological properties such as a yield stress of the order of a few hundreds of millipascals to a few tens of pascals, due to a complex network of mucins in water along with non-mucin proteins, DNA and cell debris. In this review, we discuss the origin of the yield stress in human mucus, the changes in the rheology of mucus with the occurrence of diseases, and possible clinical applications in disease detection as well as cure. We delve into the domain of mucus rheology, examining both macro- and microrheology. Macrorheology involves investigations conducted at larger length scales (∼ a few hundreds of μm or higher) using traditional rheometers, which probe properties on a bulk scale. It is significant in elucidating various mucosal functions within the human body. This includes rejecting unwanted irritants out of lungs through mucociliary and cough clearance, protecting the stomach wall from the acidic environment as well as biological entities, safeguarding cervical canal from infections and providing a swimming medium for sperms. Additionally, we explore microrheology, which encompasses studies performed at length scales ranging from a few tens of nm to a μm. These microscale studies find various applications, including the context of drug delivery. Finally, we employ scaling analysis to elucidate a few examples in lung, cervical, and gastric mucus, including settling of irritants in lung mucus, yielding of lung mucus in cough clearance and cilial beating, spreading of exogenous surfactants over yielding mucus, swimming of Helicobacter pylori through gastric mucus, and lining of protective mucus in the stomach. The scaling analyses employed on the applications mentioned above provide us with a deeper understanding of the link between the rheology and the physiology of mucus.

Effects of gravity and surface tension on steady microbubble propagation in asymmetric bifurcating airways

Mechanical ventilation is nowadays a well-developed, safe, and necessary strategy for acute respiratory distress syndrome patients to survive. However, the propagation of microbubbles in airway bifurcations during mechanical ventilation makes the existing lung injury more severe. In this paper, finite element and direct interface tracking techniques were utilized to simulate steady microbubble propagation in a two-dimensional asymmetric bifurcating airway filled with a viscous fluid. Inertial effects were neglected, and the numerical solution of Stokes's equations was used to investigate how gravity and surface tension defined by a Bond (Bo) number and capillary (Ca) number influence the magnitudes of pressure gradients, shear stresses, and shear stress gradients on the bifurcating daughter airway wall. It is found that increasing Bo significantly influenced both the bubble shape and hydrodynamic stresses, where Bo ≥ 0.25 results in a significant increase in bubble elevation and pressure gradient in the upper daughter wall. Although for both Bo and Ca, the magnitude of the pressure gradient is always much larger in the upper daughter airway wall, Ca has a great role in amplifying the magnitude of the pressure gradient. In conclusion, both gravity and surface tension play a key role in the steady microbubble propagation and hydrodynamic stresses in the bifurcating airways.

Effects of Surface Tension and Yield Stress on Mucus Plug Rupture: A Numerical Study

We study the effects of surface tension and yield stress on mucus plug rupture. A three-dimensional simplified configuration is employed to simulate mucus plug rupture in a collapsed lung airway of the tenth generation. The Herschel-Bulkley model is used to take into account the non-Newtonian viscoplastic fluid properties of mucus. Results show that the maximum wall shear stress greatly changes right prior to the rupture of the mucus plug. The surface tension influences mainly the late stage of the rupture process when the plug deforms greatly and the curvature of the mucus-air interface becomes significant. High surface tension increases the wall shear stress and the time needed to rupture since it produces a resistance to the rupture, as well as strong stress and velocity gradients across the mucus-air interface. The yield stress effects are pronounced mainly at the beginning. High yield stress makes the plug take a long time to yield and slows down the whole rupture process. When the effects induced by the surface tension and yield forces are comparable, dynamical quantities strongly depend on the ratio of the two forces. The pressure difference (the only driving in the study) contributes to wall shear stress much more than yield stress and surface tension per unit length. Wall shear stress is less sensitive to the variation in yield stress than that in surface tension. In general, wall shear stress can be effectively reduced by the smaller pressure difference and surface tension.