Analysis for stress environment in the alveolar sac model

Copyright © 2013 Ramana M. Pidaparti et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Better understanding of alveolar mechanics is very important in order to avoid lung injuries for patients undergoing mechanical ventilation for treatment of respiratory problems. The objective of this study was to investigate the alveolar mechanics for two different alveolar sac models, one based on actual geometry and the other an idealized spherical geometry using coupled fluid-solid computational analysis. Both the models were analyzed through coupled fluid-solid analysis to estimate the parameters such as pressures/ velocities and displacements/stresses under mechani-cal ventilation conditions. The results obtained from the fluid analysis indicate that both the alveolar ge-ometries give similar results for pressures and veloci-ties. However, the results obtained from coupled flu-id-solid analysis indicate that the actual alveolar ge-ometry results in smaller displacements in compa-rison to a spherical alveolar model. This trend is also true for stress/strain between the two models. The results presented indicate that alveolar geometry greatly affects the pressure/velocities as well as dis-placements and stresses/strains