Session OM - Bio-Fluid Dynamics III.
ORAL session, Tuesday afternoon, November 23
Magnolia, New Orleans Hyatt Regency
Spinner-flask bioreactors are operated with several stationary tissue constructs mounted on long needles; the culture medium is stirred by a magnetic stir bar at the vessel bottom. Flow-visualization and PIV measurements have been performed in a scaled-up model system in which the curved, outer vessel wall has been eliminated and the vessel body, culture-medium simulant and tissue-construct models are all index-of-refraction matched. Measurements in the vicinity of the tissue constructs indicate high instantaneous shear stresses at some locations, which may be detrimental to tissue growth. Since the flow is driven by a periodic source, turbulence properties are determined using phase-locked ensemble averaging.