Summary: VOLUME 81, NUMBER 4 P H Y S I C A L R E V I E W L E T T E R S 27 JULY 1998
Asymmetric Flow in Symmetric Branched Structures
J. S. Andrade, Jr.,1,2
A. M. Alencar,1,2,3
M. P. Almeida,1
J. Mendes Filho,1
S. V. Buldyrev,2
S. Zapperi,2
H. E. Stanley,2
and B. Suki3
1
Departamento de Fi´sica, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60451-970 Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
2
Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
3
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
(Received 14 October 1997)
We investigate the fluid flow through a cascade of bifurcations by direct simulation of the 2D
Navier-Stokes equations. We show that, for a fully symmetric tree with n generations (n $ 3 ,
the flow distribution becomes significantly heterogeneous at an increased Reynolds number. We

Source: Alencar, Adriano Mesquita - Departamento de Física Geral, Universidade de São Paulo
Stanley, H. Eugene - Department of Physics, Boston University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences; Materials Science; Physics