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Biotransport
Biotransport
Biotransport
Page 1 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
~
where D is known as the diffusion coefficient. The diffusion
coefficient depends on both the species being transported and the
material that it is being transported in, and is a measure of how
quickly the substance can diffuse (see e.g. Appendix J in Welty et al.
text). You will notice from the above expression that the diffusion
time gets very large when the distance L gets large. The rule of
thumb is that diffusion is very fast over short distances, but very
inefficient over longer distances, and that diffusion of a small
substance is faster than diffusion of a large substance. Diffusion is
typically responsible for transport processes where the length scale
is tens of microns or less, i.e. within and around the cell.
• Convection is transport due to the motion of a fluid. The
transported species gets carried along with the moving fluid.
Convection is at work if you stir your coffee up to mix in the cream.
It is much more efficient than diffusion over large distances, and is
the mechanism of transport in the cardiovascular and respiratory
systems.
Page 2 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
Stress and the Stress Tensor: Stress is force per unit area, and therefore
has units of N/m2 (Pa), dynes/cm2, psi, etc. Stress is a complicated thing
because it depends on two quantities that are both vectors, namely
force and the orientation of the surface. This means that stress is
actually a second order tensor, which is the generalization of a vector.
The stress tensor is denoted by σ, and its components are denoted by
σij. Note that there are two indices to the stress tensor:
• The first index refers to the plane on which the stress acts, or
more specifically, to the orientation of the outward normal to
that plane.
• The second index refers to the direction in which the force acts.
σ =
For normal stresses, the stress is considered positive when the force
and the normal vector to the surface point in the same direction. That
means that tensile stresses are positive and compressive stresses are
negative.
Page 3 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
F F
Solid Fluid
Lim Δ
=
Δ → 0 Δ
Page 4 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
δV ∆V
Even worse, there is a more common unit of mass the British system,
the pound-mass (lbm). The thing to remember is that one pound-mass
weighs one pound-force on earth (at sea level). What does that mean?
We can use W = mg, where W is weight, m is mass and g is gravitational
acceleration (32.2 ft/s2) to write:
ft
1 lbf = 1 lbm × 32.2
s
Page 5 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
That means that a pound-force is exactly the same as 32.2. lbm ft/s2,
just the same way as 1 N is exactly the same as 1 kg m/s2. Exercise:
show from the above that there are 32.2 lbm in one slug.
Answer: We write:
Δ$ = %ℎ
)* +
= 65.5 × 32.2 × 6 +
+ ,
)* )*+ +
= 1.266 × 10- . 0 1 5
+ 32.2 )* +/ 144 34
)*+ 760 7%
= 2.73 . 0
34 14.7 $3
= 141 7%
Page 6 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
then we have steady flow. A very strange thing is that we can have fluid
acceleration even in steady flow! At first sense this does not seem to
make sense (if velocity is not changing with time, then how can there be
any acceleration?) To see how this can occur, consider the flow in a
converging pipe, as shown below. We will show later that if the fluid is
incompressible (constant density) then the fluid velocity must be higher
in the small section of the pipe. If we have a steady supply of fluid and
no time-variation, then the velocity measured at every point in the flow
will be independent of time. Therefore, the flow is steady. However, if
we consider the fate of a fluid particle we can see that as it moves from
to , it must speed up. Therefore, the fluid particle has acceleration.
<9
This tells us that : ≠
<=
in the Eulerian formulation.
v1 < v2
> >
%?@?A, A = %?C?A, D?A, E?A, A
> >
∂% ∂C ∂% ∂D ∂% ∂E ∂%
= + + +
∂C ∂ ∂D ∂ ∂E ∂ ∂
<
But <= is just the rate of change of x-position of the fluid particle with
time, which is nothing other than the x-component of the particle’s
velocity, vx. Applying a similar argument to the second and third terms,
we obtain:
> ∂% ∂% ∂% ∂%
%?@?A, A = G + G + G +
> ∂C
∂D ∂E ∂
∂%
= + 9 • ∇%
∂
Page 7 of 8
BMED3300 Biotransport Lecture Notes © C. Ross Ethier 2004, 2013
∂9
:= + 9 • ∇9
∂
G >D
=
G
>C
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