Effects of Kinematic Hardening of Mucus Polymers in an Airway Closure Model.

The formation of a liquid plug inside a human airway, known as airway closure, is computationally studied by considering the elastoviscoplastic (EVP) properties of the pulmonary mucus covering the airway walls for a range of liquid film thicknesses and Laplace numbers. The airway is modeled as a rigid tube lined with a single layer of an EVP liquid. The Saramito-Herschel-Bulkley (Saramito-HB) model is coupled with an Isotropic Kinematic Hardening model (Saramito-HB-IKH) to allow energy dissipation at low strain rates.

Yield-stress fluids in porous media: a comparison of viscoplastic and elastoviscoplastic flows.

A numerical and theoretical study of yield-stress fluid flows in two types of model porous media is presented. We focus on viscoplastic and elastoviscoplastic flows to reveal some differences and similarities between these two classes of flows. Small elastic effects increase the pressure drop and also the size of unyielded regions in the flow which is the consequence of different stress solutions compare to viscoplastic flows.