Modeling Transport and Deposition Efficiency of Oblate and Prolate Nano- and Micro-particles in a Virtual Model of the Human Airway

Abstract

A model for the motion and deposition of oblate and prolate spheroids in the nano- and microscale was developed. The aim was to mimic the environment of the human lung, but the model is general and can be applied for different flows and geometries for small nonspherical particle Stokes and Reynolds numbers. A study of the motion and orientation of a single oblate and prolate particle has been done yielding that Brownian motion disturbs the Jeffery orbits for small particles. Prolate microparticles still display distinguishable orbits while oblate particles of the same size do not. A statistical study was done comparing the deposition efficiencies of oblate and prolate spheroids of different size and aspect ratio observing that smaller particles have higher deposition rate for lower aspect ratio while larger particles have higher deposition rates for large aspect ratio.