Mixing and emptying of gastric contents in human-stomach: A numerical study

Abstract

Stomach is one of the most important organs in human gastro-track. To better understand the operation of human-stomach, the process of mixing and emptying of gastric contents is simulated using a numerical method. The numerical results confirm that a fast pathway is located close to the lesser curvature of the stomach when water is emptied. However, this fast pathway doesn't exist when the gastric contents are composed of water and food boluses with different properties. The muscle contractions enhance the mixing of light food boluses and water, while they have limited effects on heavy food boluses. As a result, the foods are distributed in layers; heavy food boluses are located in the bottom layer. Besides the gastric motility and high viscosity of foods, the food matrix made of heavy food particles is also important to the formation of the Magenstrasse (stomach road). The food matrix and the zone of wrinkles behave like a porous medium which has higher flow resistance to the light food particles than to the water, leading to faster emptying of water. The water is emptied along the stomach wall since the flow resistance in the stomach wrinkles is smaller than the one in the food matrix. This mechanism is supported by the numerical results, while it might interpret the phenomena observed in the experiments.

Keywords: Computational fluid dynamics (CFD); Food boluses; Food matrix; Gastric motility; Magenstrasse.