Anna Stadler, Michael Krieger, Werner Baumgartner,
"How the Sandfish Lizard Filters Particles and What We May Learn from It"
: Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Springer, Seite(n) 439-449, 7-2018, ISBN: 978-3-319-95972-6
Original Titel:
How the Sandfish Lizard Filters Particles and What We May Learn from It
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Buchtitel:
Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems
Original Kurzfassung:
The sandfish lizard Scincus scincus spends its life in the aeolian
dune deserts. To prevent sand grains from entering its lungs, it is
hypothesized that the particles are aerodynamically filtered when they
enter the nasal cavity: The vestibulum is a narrow rounded channel leading
to a kind of »chamber«, where cilia and mucus are present. In this
chamber the particles get caught by mucus during a slow, long-lasting
inhalation (2 s) due to the air flow induced by the characteristic morphology in this area, and eventually get exhaled because of an intense,
cough-like exhalation that lasts only 40 ms. To verify this theory we studied the filtering system by integrating experiments and computational
fluid dynamic simulations of fluid and particle flow. The simulations
show that the flow profile anterior to and in the chamber is characterized
by a strong cross-flow velocity that moves the sand grains towards
the mucus-covered wall; particles usually remain close to the lower wall
of the vestibulum and subsequently get trapped. Due to the air flow profile particles would get trapped even if they reached the central region of the nasal cavity. In this context we explore the possibility to optimize state of the art filtering systems.