A numerical study of muco-ciliary transport under the condition of diseased cilia

Structural and functional disorders of pulmonary cilia may result from genetic disorders and acquired insults. A two-dimensional numerical model based on the immersed boundary method coupled with the projection method is used to study the flow physics of muco-ciliary transport of the human respiratory tract under various abnormalities of cilia. The effects of the cilia beat pattern (CBP), ciliary length, immotile cilia, beating amplitude and uncoordinated beating of cilia are investigated. As expected, the mucus velocity decreases as the beating amplitude reduces. The windscreen wiper motion and rigid planar motion, which are two abnormal CBPs owing to genetic disorders, greatly reduce or almost stop the mucus transport. If the ciliary length varies from its standard length, the mucus velocity would decrease. The mucus velocity decreases rather linearly if the number of uniformly distributed immotile cilia increases. The numerical results show that the mucus velocity would be further reduced marginally when the uniformly distributed immotile cilia are rearranged as a cluster of immotile cilia. Furthermore, if half of the cilia are immotile and uniformly distributed and motile cilia beat at reduced amplitude, the incoordination between the active motile cilia would not significantly affect the mucus velocity.