Multiscale Modelling of Lymphatic Drainage - Multiscale Computer Modeling in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering - page 160

Fig. 4 a Cannulated lymph vessel in vitro. b Typical experimental setup for measuring flow and
physical properties, reproduced from [ 30 ]

Table 2 Components of the zero dimensional lymphatic models
Fluid device Electrical component

Compliant vessel

Q ¼ C d dt q ¼ CV ) d dt ¼ I ¼ C d dt

Capacitor

Viscosity Dp ¼ QR V ¼ IR Resistor

Inertia

Dp ¼ L d dt V ¼ L d dt

Inductor

[ 45 ]; in the lymph network they have been applied by Lambert and Benoit[ 21 ] and
extensively by Quick, Venugopal and colleagues [ 35 , 56 ].
A simple deformable pipe can be modelled through a combination of the three
individual elements detailed in Table 2 ; with the circuit capacitance representing
the wall compliance, resistance representing the fluid viscosity and self-inductance
representing fluid inertia in the system. There are numerous possible arrangements
of components which can be used to model the deformable pipe in arbitrary detail;
the simplest model is the Windkessel circuit shown in Fig. 5 . This can be used to