The effects of exterior boundary conditions on a internally heated tumor tissue with a thermoporoelastic model

Abstract

Modeling flow field in tumor regions interstitial space is of primary importance, because of the importance of advection in macromolecule drug delivery. Its deformation has also to be taken into account because of the forces caused by the fluid; if the tumor region is not isothermal, this deformation can be also strongly affected by temperature fields.In this paper, the effects of thermal boundary conditions on a tumor region periphery with an internal heat source are investigated. The tumor region is modeled as a deformable sphere, in which two phases can be distinguished. The fluid phase is the interstitial fluid, while the rest of the tumor is modeled as the solid phase, including also capillaries and tissues. Transient-state governing equations for mass, momentum and energy are written for both phases, by also considering tumor deformation under the linear elastic material assumption. A situation of Tumor Blood Flow (TBF) rapid decay, in which vascular pressure rapidly approaches to zero, is considered, while the heat source is modeled as a fourth-grade radial-decay function. Boundary conditions for the energy equation are varied on the external surface of the sphere, in order to appreciate the effects of the surrounding on flow and temperature fields inside the tumor. After scaling equations, a finite-element scheme is employed for the numerical solution. Comparisons with analytical solutions from literature show a good agreement. Results are shown for different dimensionless parameters that are referred to temperature, volumetric strain, pressure and velocity, showing in which case external boundary conditions strongly affect tumor region flow fields and a third-kind boundary condition is needed.