Date/Time
Date(s) - 06/04/2023
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Speaker: Suncica (Sunny) Canic – UC Berkeley

Series Title: A Mathematical Approach to the Design of a Bioartificial Pancreas

Lecture Title: Moving boundary problems involving poroelastic media    

Abstract: Poroelasticity refers to fluid flow within deformable porous media. Historically, studies of the fluid flow through porous media were motivated by applications in geosciences. More recently, poroelastic media flow models have been used to describe a variety of biological and biomedical applications, including bioartificial organ design. In bioartificial organ design the poroelastic medium consists of two layers: a thick poroelastic layer corresponding to the bioartificial organ containing transplanted cells, and a thin poroelastic membrane layer, which serves as the organ capsule and protects the organ from the harmful patient’s immune cells. This encapsulated organ is connected to the patient’s blood flow, which provides supply of oxygen and nutrients to the cells within the thick poroelastic medium. The resulting mathematical problem describing the interaction between blood flow and the encapsulated organ is a fluid-structure/moving boundary problem with a multi-layered poroelastic medium. Establishing existence of a solution to this class of moving boundary problems is still open. In this talk, I will summarize recent progress in proving existence of weak solutions to this fluid-structure interaction problem in the case of linear coupling (Stokes-Biot plate-Biot model coupling), and in the case of nonlinear coupling (Navier-Stokes, reticular plate, Biot model coupling). Numerical simulations showing applications of these results to real life problems will be shown.

Location: HH 305