Growth of gas bubbles in the biotissues with convective acceleration

Abstract

This paper presents formulae and explanation about the growth of a convective gas bubble in the blood and other tissues of divers who surface too quickly, concentration distribution around the growing bubble is also presented. The formulae are valid all over the growth stages, i.e. under variable ambient pressure while the diver is ascending, and under constant ambient pressure at diving stops or at sea level. The mathematical model is solved analytically by using the method of combined variables. The growth process is affected by tissue diffusivity, concentration constant and the initial void fraction, which is the dominant parameter. Results show that, the time of the complete growth, in the convective growth model, is shorter than those earlier presented by Mohammadein and Mohamed [Concentration distribution around a growing gas bubble in tissue, Math. Biosci.225(1) (2010) 11–17] and Srinivasan et al. [Mathematical models of diffusion-limited gas bubble dynamics in tissue, J. Appl. Physiol.86 (1999) 732–741] for the growth of a stationary gas bubble, this explains the effect of bubble motion on consuming the oversaturated dissolved gas from the tissue into growing bubble which leads to increment in the growth rate to be more than those presented in the previous stationary models.