Open Access

ARTICLE

MD Simulation of Colloidal Particle Transportation in a Fiber Matrix

Chen X.Y.^∗,†, Liu Y.^2,‡, Fu B.M.^§, Fan J.T.^¶, Yang J.M.¹

∗ School of Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
† Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
‡ Corresponding author
§ Department of Biomedical Engineering, The City College of The City University of New York, USA
¶ Institute of Textile andClothes, TheHongKongPolytechnic University, Hong Kong

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics 2008, 5(4), 275-284. https://doi.org/10.3970/mcb.2008.005.275

Abstract

Surface glycocalyx, as a barrier to material exchange between circulating blood and body tissues, can be treated as a periodic square array of cylindrical fibers. Previous study treated the glycocalyx as porous media and simulated by continuum theory. However, it has recently been found that a relatively hexagonal fibre-matrix structure may be responsible for the ultrafiltration properties of microvascular walls. The fibre-matrix is an underlaying three-dimensional meshwork with a fibre diameter of 10$\sim$12 nm and characteristic spacing of about 20 nm. The porous medium model does not consider the particle size, when the particle size is comparable to the fibre spacing, the porous medium assumption may not be appropriate to study the permeable characteristics of nanosize particle in such fibre-matrix structure. \newline Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is a powerful method to simulate the fluid flow at the molecular level, it has been applied successfully in many fields including hydrodynamics and demonstrated surprising results at nanoscale which is different from their macroscopic counterparts. In this study we use MD to investigate the permeable characteristics of nano-particle in a quasi-periodic ultra-structure of the endothelial glycocalyx. As the first attempt, fibre-matrix is simplified as a two dimensional periodic system in which the colloidal particles, fluid solvent, fibers are all treated as atomic systems, and the study is focused on the effect of particle size on particle motion in fiber matrix.

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