Séminaire de la SFR MODMAD

Upscaling transport in a complex disordered system: structure-function interplay in the human placenta

par Igor Chernyavsky (University of Manchester)

Europe/Paris
Salle des séminaires du département de Mathématiques, salle C 112 (Université Jean Monnet, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques)

Salle des séminaires du département de Mathématiques, salle C 112

Université Jean Monnet, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques

23 rue du Docteur Paul Michelon, Saint-Étienne.
Description
The human placenta is a fetal life-support system, where the
primary exchange units, terminal villi, contain disordered networks of
fetal capillaries and are interfaced with maternal blood percolating a
complex porous medium.

While placental transport at the micro-scale can be described by
established models, systematically upscaling the transport and
quantifying the associated uncertainty at the organ-scale remain open
challenges.

On the porous side, we consider flow past a one-dimensional random array
to understand the interplay between the physics of transport and
microscopic disorder.
Our analysis reveals surprising long-range correlations in the upscaled
approximation that strongly depend on the statistics of the microstructure.

On the network side, we integrate three-dimensional image-based
geometric and transport features into new non-dimensional parameters to
show how the irregular internal structure of a terminal villus
determines its exchange capacity for a wide range of solutes.
The developed theory provides a robust and efficient tool for
quantifying solute exchange in complex microvascular systems.