An active porous media model for tissue-scale cilia-driven flows

Tissue-scale cilia-driven flows can be found throughout nature, including in the human lung, reproductive tracts, brain ventricles, and spinal canal. To understand how fluid transport differs between healthy and diseased tissues and how these differences impact physiological function, it is crucial to develop efficient, yet accurate, models of these ciliary flows. However, most models of tissue-scale flows are computationally intensive, limiting their scalability. Here, we propose a novel active porous media modeling framework. With this model, we compute fluid pumping in a range of ciliated organ geometries, while varying ciliary activity, cilia spatial distribution, and adverse pressure gradients. We compare these results to published experimental data and construct a landscape of pumping performance versus ciliary input parameters. These results advance our understanding of active transport in ciliated tissues and how pathology affects fluid pumping.