Particle transport in the human respiratory tract: formulation of a nodal inverse distance weighted Eulerian-Lagrangian transport and implementation of the Wind-Kessel algorithm for an oral delivery.

This paper is the first in a series wherein efficient computational methods are developed and implemented to accurately quantify the transport, deposition, and clearance of the microsized particles (range of interest: 2 to 10 µm) in the human respiratory tract. In particular, this paper (part I) deals with (i) development of a detailed 3D computational finite volume mesh comprising of the NOPL (nasal, oral, pharyngeal and larynx), trachea and several airway generations; (ii) use of CFD Research Corporation's finite volume Computational Biology (CoBi) flow solver to obtain the flow physics for an oral inhalation simulation; (iii) implement a novel and accurate nodal inverse distance weighted Eulerian-Lagrangian formulation to accurately obtain the deposition, and (iv) development of Wind-Kessel boundary condition algorithm. This new Wind-Kessel boundary condition algorithm allows the 'escaped' particles to reenter the airway through the outlets, thereby to an extent accounting for the drawbacks of having a finite number of lung generations in the computational mesh. The deposition rates in the NOPL, trachea, the first and second bifurcation were computed, and they were in reasonable accord with the Typical Path Length model. The quantitatively validated results indicate that these developments will be useful for (i) obtaining depositions in diseased lungs (because of asthma and COPD), for which there are no empirical models, and (ii) obtaining the secondary clearance (mucociliary clearance) of the deposited particles.