The role of porous medium modeling in biothermofluids

Biothermology or Bio-fluid flow and heat transfer is an important and developing subdivision of bioengineering. Seeking simplifications for biological processes that are inherently complex, through porous medium models, is an exciting and useful multidisciplinary pursuit. This review presents an overview of the post-2002 research on the modelling aspects of several biothermofluid processes based primarily on the porous medium approach. Beginning with a definition for porous medium suited for analysing transport phenomena, concepts of volume averaging, momentum and energy conservation statements are briefly discussed to motivate the ensuing review discussions. Porous medium modelling of several biomedical processes pertaining to human physiology is then discussed under two broad categories of bio-mass and bio-heat transport. The bio-mass transport section discusses LDL transport in arteries, drug delivery, drug eluting stents, functions of organs modelled as porous medium, porous medium modelling of microbial transport. Under the bioheat transport section, porous medium approach based bio-heat equations are described accompanied by a literature review. A final subsection discusses non-Fourier type bio-heat conduction phenomena. Requirement of analysis and computational efforts in the future using the generalized porous medium momentum equation and the local thermal non-equilibrium based two energy equations are highlighted.