Applied Statistics Commons^™

The Numerical Design Of A Parallel Plate Flow Chamber For Investigation Of Endothelial Cell Response To Shear Stress, Bong Jae Chung, A. M. Robertson, D. G. Peters

Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Parallel plate chambers are frequently used to examine the response of biological cells to a constant wall shear stress. However, the stress can vary more than 80% across the chamber due to end effects. Earlier estimates of the magnitude of this inhomogeneity used boundary layer theory and experiments. Here, the full equations for steady, three-dimensional flow in a novel parallel plate device were solved numerically and used to identify an active test region where the shear stress is within 5% of a constant value. Endothelial cells can be confined to this region to assure a nearly uniform shear stress exposure.