| |
By Marc Horner and Ahmad Haidari, Fluent Inc.
View the pdf of this Supplement
The geometry of the eye (left), including the sclera (black), iris (blue), cornea (gray),
lens (pink), and choroid and ciliary body (red). A continuous, room temperature air
stream cools the cornea surface for 30 seconds. After the air stream is stopped, the
cornea warms up again. Natural convection currents develop in the anterior chamber,
and these are illustrated by contours of velocity magnitude (right). By studying the
rate at which the eye warms up, researchers can determine the rate of blood flow to
the eye through the choroid and ciliary body.
Courtesy of Dr. S. Orgül, Augenklinik Basel, Switzerland
The healthcare industry is facing a dynamic future with many challenges
stemming from an expanding elderly population in the
developed world, higher levels of care, and a constant push for
new, more effective pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals. From
the discovery, manufacturing, and delivery of new drugs to biomedical
device design and disease research, CFD is a key tool that will be at
the forefront of this growing industry. Fluent has been providing biomedical
modeling solutions for over a decade. It has a dedicated and
knowledgeable staff, and has academic and industrial partners to meet
the needs of many far-reaching applications.
For the pharmaceutical and medical products industries, the many
capabilities in Fluent software offer solutions for both drug manufacturing
and drug delivery. FLUENT is used in applications such as
spray dryers, scale-up, mixing, and chemical reaction. Devices such
as inhalers, blood pumps, artificial heart valves, stents, and catheters
have been successfully modeled with FLUENT and FIDAP to better
understand their performance and interaction with the human body.
FIDAP’s fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model has been widely used
to capture the deformation of physiologic structures as a result of
air, liquid, or blood flow. POLYFLOW is ideal for extrusion, blow molding,
and thermoforming, processes that often involve viscoelastic
materials, and which are used for the manufacture of pharmaceutical
packaging and medical devices.
Velocity magnitude
displayed on a
number of slice
planes through the
nasal cavity; the
nostrils are at the
lower left
Bioengineering has experienced rapid growth in recent years, thanks
to the ability to create 3D meshes from MRI and CT scan data of
blood vessels, the digestive tract, or air passageways. Simulations of
these systems are geared towards understanding the underlying causes
of disease or analyzing device performance. The import of medical
scan data into GAMBIT has been assisted by recently developed
filters, and through partnerships with industry leaders who specialize
in this capability.
Separation of two species in a solution exposed to an applied electric field, resulting
from the different mobilities of each; the width of the microchannel containing them is
expanded by a factor of 10 for visualization purposes
Microfluidic applications are at the forefront of many industries,
including healthcare. In the biomedical area, so-called “lab-on-a-chip”
applications include chemical/biological agent detection, DNA
sequencing/analysis, and drug discovery. The various analytical tasks
are performed in a series of microchannels whose characteristic width
and height are between 10 and 1000 mm. Two critical applications
for this type of analysis are the separation (isolation) and detection
of a target species. Both processes rely on differences in the mobility,
or migration speed of the species when subjected to an applied
electric field. The electrohydrodynamics (EHD) modeling capability
in FIDAP has been successfully used to predict the separation and
pre-concentration of chemical species in this manner.
The collection of stories in this supplement is representative of the
wide range of applications of interest in the healthcare industry today.
Articles that focus on blood flow, breathing, drug delivery, medical equipment,
and pharmaceuticals highlight the efforts of some of our customers.
Indeed, the work of these and other analysts, who have adopted
CFD for biomedical applications, has led to the enormous growth of
flow modeling in the healthcare industry during the past few years.
CFD capabilities for biomedical applications will continue to expand,
and will hopefully help us all lead longer and healthier lives!
|
|
|
