Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate and quantify contributions of kinetic energy and viscous dissipation to airway resistance during inspiration and expiration at various flow rates in airway models of different bifurcation angles. We employed symmetric airway models up to the 20th generation with the following five different bifurcation angles at a tracheal flow rate of 20 L/min: 15 deg, 25 deg, 35 deg, 45 deg, and 55 deg. Thus, a total of ten computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for both inspiration and expiration were conducted. Furthermore, we performed additional four simulations with tracheal flow rate values of 10 and 40 L/min for a bifurcation angle of 35 deg to study the effect of flow rate on inspiration and expiration. Using an energy balance equation, we quantified contributions of the pressure drop associated with kinetic energy and viscous dissipation. Kinetic energy was found to be a key variable that explained the differences in airway resistance on inspiration and expiration. The total pressure drop and airway resistance were larger during expiration than inspiration, whereas wall shear stress and viscous dissipation were larger during inspiration than expiration. The dimensional analysis demonstrated that the coefficients of kinetic energy and viscous dissipation were strongly correlated with generation number. In addition, the viscous dissipation coefficient was significantly correlated with bifurcation angle and tracheal flow rate. We performed multiple linear regressions to determine the coefficients of kinetic energy and viscous dissipation, which could be utilized to better estimate the pressure drop in broader ranges of successive bifurcation structures.