Modeling water flow through arterial tissue

A simple model of, water flow through deformable porous media has been developed with emphasis on application to arterial walls. The model incorporates a strain-dependent permeability function into Darcy's Law which is coupled, to the force balance for the bulk material. A simple analytical expression relating water flux (volume flux) to pressure differential is developed which shows how strain-dependent permeability can lead to a reduction in hydraulic conductivity with increasing differential pressure as observed in experiments with arteries. The variation of permeability with position in the wall, which may influence the convective diffusion of macromolecules, is determined for both cylindrical and planar segments and a marked influence of geometry is noted.