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Purely elastic instabilities in the airways and oral area

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2021

Ramkarn Patne Open the ORCID record for Ramkarn Patne [Opens in a new window]
Ramkarn Patne*
Affiliation:
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad826004, India
*
†Email address for correspondence: ramkarn@iitism.ac.in
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Abstract

The present study considers a shear-thinning viscoelastic liquid layer sheared by the air and flowing past a deformable-solid layer in the presence of a surfactant at the air–liquid interface to model the airflow in the oral area and airways. The stability analysis reveals the existence of purely elastic and unconditionally unstable ‘liquid elastic’ and ‘solid elastic’ modes. The mechanism responsible for the destabilisation of the solid elastic mode is the shear stresses exerted by the air on the liquid and by the liquid on the deformable solid while for the liquid elastic mode, the mechanism is the first normal stress difference across the air–liquid interface. The liquid and solid elastic modes undergo resonance, resulting in the ‘resonance mode’ of instability. The resonance mode exhibits a much higher growth rate than the liquid and solid elastic modes. The shear-thinning characteristic of the liquid and presence of the surfactant leads to enhancement in the growth rate of the resonance mode. An estimate shows a good correlation between the exhaled fluid particle (i.e. droplets and aerosols) diameters and the wavelength of the perturbations with maximum growth rate. In essence, the present analysis predicts that the airflow in the airways and oral area could lead to an elastic instability arising due to the elastic nature of the saliva, mucus and underlying muscle layers.

JFM classification

Biological Fluid Dynamics: Pulmonary fluid mechanics Instability: Absolute/convective instability
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 928 , 10 December 2021 , A22
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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