Analysis ofWater Transport inside a Plant Xylem Vessel with Pitted Thickening

Abstract

In this article, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are used to explore the dynamics of water transport inside the pitted thickening of a plant xylem vessel. A pitted thickening model combined with the Bernoulli equation is used to analyze the influence of various factors (namely, the inner diameter, thickening width, thickening height, thickening spacing, number of laps and adjacent pit axial rotation). The pressure drop and the flow resistance coefficient are the variable parameters for our analysis. The results show that these two parameters are proportional to the thickening height and thickening width, and inversely proportional to the inner diameter, thickening spacing and number of laps. Three different wall thickening structures of the vessel are compared and the pitted thickening vessel is shown to provide the largest structural flow resistance, the annular thickening vessel has the second largest resistance and the helical thickening vessel corresponds to the smallest resistance of the three structures.