The air-liquid flow in a microfluidic airway tree

Abstract

Microfluidic techniques are employed to investigate air-liquid flows in the pulmonary airway tree. A network of microchannels with five generations is made and used as a simplified model of the pulmonary airway tree. Liquid plugs are injected into the network and pushed by air flow to divide at every bifurcation before reaching the exits. The resistance associated with the presence of one plug in a given generation is defined to establish a linear relation between the driving pressure and the total flow rate in the network. Based on this resistance, we have good predictions of the flow of two successive plugs in the network. For two-plug flows under the same driving pressure, the total flow rate depends not only on the lengths of the plugs but also the initial distance between the two. Strong long range interactions are found between daughter plugs, especially when they are flowing through the bifurcations. We also observe different flow patterns under different pushing conditions. Under a constant pressure forcing, the flow develops symmetrically while a constant flow rate push achieves an asymmetric flow.