Purpose

This study aims to perform flow simulations inside the acinus with fine alveolar pores (Kohn pores) using hexagonal cells and bottom-up geometric modeling, which enabled the elimination of invalid voids using previous top-bottom methods and spherical or circular cells.

Design/methodology/approach

Regular hexagonal cells were used to construct alveoli with no gaps via tessellation. Some hexagonal cells were fused to eliminate the inner boundaries to represent the structure of the bronchial tree. For the remaining hexagonal cells, the side lengths of the shared walls were adjusted to construct alveolar pores. Periodic moving boundaries with the same phase were set for all walls to describe synchronous contraction and expansion of the bronchi and alveoli.

Findings

More realistic flow characteristics in the distal lung were obtained. The effects of pore size and the mechanism of auxiliary ventilation of alveolar pores were revealed.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first numerical simulation study on the function of multiple alveolar pores at the level of pulmonary acini, which will be helpful for simulating the dynamic process of cough and sputum excretion in the future.

中文翻译：

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具有肺泡孔的肺腺泡的基于镶嵌的建模和流动模拟

目的

本研究旨在使用六角形细胞和自下而上的几何建模在具有细小肺泡孔（Kohn 孔）的腺泡内进行流动模拟，这使得使用以前的自上而下方法和球形或圆形细胞能够消除无效空隙。

设计/方法/途径

规则的六边形细胞被用来通过镶嵌来构建没有间隙的肺泡。融合一些六角形细胞以消除内部边界以表示支气管树的结构。对于剩余的六角形细胞，调整共享壁的边长以构建肺泡孔。为所有壁设置具有相同相位的周期性移动边界以描述支气管和肺泡的同步收缩和扩张。

发现

获得了远端肺中更真实的流动特性。揭示了孔径的影响和肺泡孔的辅助通气机制。

原创性/价值

据作者所知，这是首次在肺腺泡水平上对多个肺泡孔的功能进行数值模拟研究，这将有助于未来模拟咳嗽和排痰的动态过程。