Surface-tension-induced buckling of liquid-lined elastic tubes: a model pulmonary airway closure

Hazel, Andrew L. and Heil, Matthias (2005) Surface-tension-induced buckling of liquid-lined elastic tubes: a model pulmonary airway closure. Proceedings of the Royal society A, 461 (2058). pp. 1847-1868. ISSN 1471-2946

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Abstract

We use a fully coupled, three-dimensional, finite-element method to study the evolution of the surface-tension-driven instabilities of a liquid layer that lines an elastic tube, a simple model for pulmonary airway closure. The equations of large-displacement shell theory are used to describe the deformations of the tube and are coupled to the Navier–Stokes equations, describing the motion of the liquid. The liquid layer is susceptible to a capillary instability, whereby an initially uniform layer can develop a series of axisymmetric peaks and troughs, analogous to the classical instability that causes liquid jets to break up into droplets. For sufficiently high values of the liquid's surface tension, relative to the bending stiffness of the tube, the additional compressive load induced by the development of the axisymmetric instability can induce non-axisymmetric buckling of the tube wall. Once the tube has buckled, a strong destabilizing feedback between the fluid and solid mechanics leads to an extremely rapid further collapse and occlusion of the gas-conveying core of the tube by the liquid. We find that such occlusion is possible even when the volume of the liquid is too small to form an occluding liquid bridge in the axisymmetric tube.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	pulmonary airway closure, free-surface Navier–Stokes equations, thin-shell theory, fluid–structure interaction
Subjects:	MSC 2010, the AMS's Mathematics Subject Classification > 76 Fluid mechanics MSC 2010, the AMS's Mathematics Subject Classification > 92 Biology and other natural sciences
Depositing User:	Ms Lucy van Russelt
Date Deposited:	22 Mar 2007
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2017 14:12
URI:	https://eprints.maths.manchester.ac.uk/id/eprint/715

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