Download Université de technologie de Compiègne – Thesis proposal Part 1

Doctoral school : ED 71 « Sciences pour l’Ingénieur » - UTC
Université de technologie de Compiègne – Thesis proposal
Part 1: Scientific sheet
Thesis proposal title
Polymerization of a liquid jet: Simulation of surgical glue embolization
of blood vessels
PhD grant
Doctoral work contract based on a Ministry of Research Grant
Research laboratory
unité de recherche : UMR 7338 Biomechanics and Bioengineering (BMBI)
research team: Biological Fluids Structures Interactions (IFSB)
web site: www.utc.fr/bmbi/
Thesis supervisor(s)
Dr. Badr Kaoui, CR2 CNRS
Dr. Mathis Plapp, DR2 CNRS (HDR), Ecole Polytechique, Physics of Irregular
Systems team, UMR 7643 Condensed Matter Physics (PMC), Palaiseau,
France
Scientific domain(s)
Physics
Biology, biomedical and health sciences
Research work
The importance of numerical modelling is rapidly increasing in the medical
sciences, both for patient-specific treatments and for the improvement of
medical techniques. The present project aims to apply modeling techniques
developed in the domain of fluid-structure interactions to the simulation of
surgical glue embolization of blood vessels. This is a novel technique used in
surgery to stop bleeding. The modeling will yield insights that could help to
improve this technique.
Context and state-of-the-art: Intravascular injection of surgical glues is used
as an alternative to open surgery to stop bleeding in case of hemorrhage or
trauma, to occlude vessels presenting malformations or abnormal blood flow
patterns, and to treat specific tumors. It consists in inserting and guiding a
catheter through the arterial network via radiography, until reaching the site of
administration of the glue (mixed with an oil). Even though glue embolization
is largely used nowadays by clinicians, the mechanisms involved in the
polymerization of the glue when it comes into contact with the blood flow are
not yet understood. No systematic study has provided a detailed description
of the physico-chemical mechanism of the polymerization or modeled the
process. The polymerization at the glue-plasma interface is complex because
of the many factors that influence it [1]: 1 - the multi-component fluid flow
(here, the blood plasma and the glue-oil mixture), 2 - The phase transition
phenomena (here, the glue polymerization), 3 - The fluid-structure interaction
and free-moving interface (here, the plasma-glue interface and the
polymerized glue bulk/film structure), 4 - The complex flow (here, the injection
of the glue-oil into the blood stream). Despite the multitude of studies in the
literature on liquid injection, drop formation and jetting, none of them has
modeled numerically the polymerization of a liquid-liquid interface [2].
The objective of the project is to build a numerical simulation of glue injection
coupled with its polymerization upon contact with blood. The project will be
based on our strong experience in modeling of complex phenomena involving
phase transitions and complex fluid dynamics. We will develop a code that
will account for all the physico-chemical and hydrodynamic aspects involved
in the process. To the best of our knowledge, such multi-physics simulations
could not be achieved with conventional commercial software (e.g. Comsol
and ANSYS Fluent). The PhD project will be conducted in tight collaboration
with our colleagues Dr. Anne-Virginie Salsac from BMBI (who has the best
knowledge of the glue embolization and who has initiated the first
comprehensive in vitro study of glue injection and polymerization [1,3]) and
Dr. Hervé Henry at Ecole Polytechnique (who will contribute with his expertise
in modeling film formation at liquid-liquid interfaces [4]).
Doctoral school : ED 71 « Sciences pour l’Ingénieur » - UTC
Goals and milestones: We will develop a phenomenological model and
study the glue polymerization kinetics as a function of the parameters of the
problem. In the static case, we will consider the influence of plasma anion and
protein concentration, temperature, and oil-to-glue fraction. We will then study
the regimes of ejection of the glue mixture as a function of the glue injection
flow rate and the surrounding plasma flow strength. Reporting a state diagram
summarizing different regimes: 1 - Dripping, 2 - Liquid jet, 3 - Destabilization
of the jet into droplets. The simulations will provide insight into how the blood
composition alters the polymerization process of the injected glue. We will
use our own in-house cutting edge codes, based on both the phase-field and
the lattice-Boltzmann methods, which we plan to upgrade and merge within
this project. The developed code will help understand the glue embolization
mechanism. It will help predict different polymerization-induced scenarios and
patterns and thus, control the phenomena to prevent any clinical complication
afterwards.
Methods of investigation: We master the knowledge and we are pioneers in
the development and use of the phase-field method (for the modeling of
phase transitions and front capturing of free-moving boundaries) [5-7] and the
lattice-Boltzmann method (for computational fluid dynamics in complex
geometries and for front tracking, when combined with the immersed
boundary method) [7-9], which are two key state-of-the-art numerical
methods. We will use phase-field modeling to track the glue-plasma interface
and handle the polymerization phase transition that takes place at the
interface (by solving the diffusion-advection-reaction equations). The study
will be carried out in a fully three-dimensional domain. This permits to model
the complete process and to capture irregular patterns observed in
experiments (see the figure), and which
could not be obtained with 2D or 3D
axisymmetric simulations (largely used to
study liquid jets and droplets generation
[10]). The production High Performance
Computing simulations will be run on
large machines, PILCAM2 of the UTC,
and we will ask access to other clusters
such as IDRIS of the CNRS.
Plan for the PhD: Development of polymerization model in absence of flow,
polymerization starting at the glue-plasma interface in a stagnant blood
plasma (1st year), coupling the polymerization model with the co-flowing
device geometry (2nd year) and coupling the polymerization with both plasma
and red blood cells motion in a microcirculatory network (3rd year).
References:
[1] M.-C. Sandulache, P. Paullier, R. Bouzerar, T. Yzet, O. Balédent, A.-V
Salsac, Liquid injection in confined coflow: application to portal vein
embolization by glue injection, Physics of Fluids. 24, 081902 (2012)
[2] J. Eggers, E. Villermaux, Physics of liquid jets, Rep. Prog. Phys. 71,
036601 (2008)
[3] Y. Li, D. Barthès-Biesel, A.-V. Salsac, Embolization of blood vessels by
glue injection: an in vitro study of polymerization kinetics, Journal of the
Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. In Press (2016)
[4] M. Ardré, H. Henry, C. Douarche, M. Plapp, An individual-based model for
biofilm formation at liquid surfaces, Physical Biology 12 (6), 066015 (2015)
[5] M. Plapp, A. Karma, Multiscale random-walk algorithm for simulating
interfacial pattern formation, Physical Review Letters. 84, 1740 (2000)
[6] B. Kaoui, M. Noureddine, R. Nassif and Y. Boughaleb, Phase-field
modelling of dendritic growth behaviour towards the cooling/heating of pure
nickel, M. J. Condensed Matter 6, 109 (2005)
[7] A. Cartalade, A. Younsi, M. Plapp: Lattice Boltzmann simulations of 3D
crystal growth: Numerical schemes for a phase-field model with anti-trapping
Doctoral school : ED 71 « Sciences pour l’Ingénieur » - UTC
current, Computers and Mathematics with Applications 71, 1784-1798 (2016).
[8] T. Krüger, B. Kaoui and J. Harting, Interplay of inertia and deformability on
rheological properties of a suspension of capsules, Journal of Fluid
Mechanics 751, 725-745 (2014)
[9] Z. Shen, G. Coupier, B. Kaoui, B. Polack, J. Harting, C. Misbah, T.
Podgorski, Inversion of hematocrit partition at microcirculatory bifurcations,
Microvascular Research 105, 40-46 (2016)
[10] Kaoui et al., Generation of ultrapure droplets using a mesh nebulizer,
Proceedings of the Workshop Physics with Industry 2016, Leiden, The
Netherlands (2017)
Key words
Glue embolization, blood flow, polymerization phase transition, liquid glue
injection
Requirements
MSc in physics, mathematics, chemical engineering, or mechanical
engineering, knowledge in scientific computing. We seek candidates who are
result-oriented, self-motivated, who like challenges and are ready to work in
collaboration and communicate effectively.
Starting time
September 2017
Location
Compiègne and Palaiseau
Part 2: Job description
Duration
36 months
Additional missions
available
Possibility of teaching
Research laboratory
BMBI is one of the leading and pioneering laboratory in France and worldwide
in biomechanics and bioengineering
Material resources
Access to the computing facilities (PILCAM2 and others)
National
collaborations
Dr. Anne-Virginie Salsac from BMBI and Dr. Hervé Henry at Ecole
Polytechnique.
Contact
[email protected]
Please contact first the thesis supervisor before applying online
on https://webapplis.utc.fr/admissions/doctorants/accueil.jsf