Analysis of shear rate-dependent viscoelastic mucociliary flow in mucus hypersecretion with thermal and concentration aspects

Thermal and concentration aspects in analyzing mucociliary transport is essential in understanding the mechanisms behind airway diseases caused by mucus hypersecretion in human airways. A mathematical model proposed by Ashraf et al. (2024) is used for the hypersecretion scenario. The airway ciliary and peri ciliary layers are formed when goblet cells secrete a substantial amount of mucus, blocking the airway channel. The shear rate-dependent viscoelastic fluid is used to better characterize the mucus rheology. The established system of nonlinear partial differential equations is addressed for approximate series solutions through the Adomian decomposition method. The analysis clarifies that both the velocity of mucus and the temperature rise as the relaxation time and pressure gradient at the airway entrance increase. The concentration decreases with the increase in mass diffusivity ratio while it increases with the increase in Schmidt number, Soret number, and pressure gradient at the airway entrance. Moreover, a comparison of the current results with the findings in existing literature reveals that shear rate-dependent viscoelastic fluid demonstrates better dynamic behavior in hypersecretion scenarios during mucociliary clearance. The Adomian decomposition method’s series solutions are validated by comparing them with numerical solutions obtained using the finite difference method.