Viscoplasticity of respiratory tissues

Low-frequency mechanical behavior of various respiratory tissues shows certain similarities. In this study we test the hypothesis that rate-independent plastic processes along with rate-dependent viscoelastic processes are responsible. We considered oscillatory responses of several respiratory tissues measured over prescribed ranges of frequency (up to 6 Hz) and amplitude of forcing. These included the excised cat lung, the human chest wall in vivo, and two components of the chest wall: the excised dog rib cage and the excised rabbit abdominal viscera; some data were previously reported and some are new. We analyzed these data using the viscoplastic model of Hildebrandt (J. Appl. Physiol. 28: 365-372, 1970). It consists of three compartments: a plastoelastic compartment mechanically in parallel with a viscoelastic compartment, both in series with a lumped inertia. We fitted oscillatory data of the above respiratory tissues to the model by a least-squares technique. The fit was qualitatively consistent with the observations and exhibited moderately good to very good quantitative correspondence. As an independent verification of this approach, we obtained the stress relaxation after a step-volume change. Based on the oscillatory response of cat lungs, the calculated stress relaxation function was found to be generally consistent with corresponding observations. This study indicates that both plasticity and viscoelasticity appear to be important determinants of mechanical behavior of respiratory tissues at low frequencies and that inertial effects are negligible.