The effects of epithelial surface topography on cell stresses during airway reopening

A collapsed pulmonary system is one whose airways are blocked by a thin liquid film that obstructs airflow. A bubble of air must peel apart these airways' walls in order to reopen them. This introduces large stresses on the pulmonary epithelial cells of a magnitude that could alter their biological functioning. We present a computational model whose goal it is to locally quantify the stresses acting on these cells.