Dry powder inhalers (DPIs) are a combination of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and significantly larger carrier particles, which are widely used for pulmonary drug delivery. The micro-sized drug particles - which have a vigorous intensity to aggregate and poor aerosolization performance and mixed with significantly large carrier particles that are unable to penetrate the mouth-throat region to deagglomerate but help the smaller API particles to entrain in the inhaled airflow. The performance of a DPI depends on entrainment of the carrier-API combination particles and the time and thoroughness of the deagglomeration of the individual API particles from the carrier particles. Since API particle transport is significantly affected by particle-particle interactions, properties of the fluidizing agent, different particle sizes and density, drag force between the particles and fluidizing agent, they present significant challenges to CFD modelers to model regional lung deposition from a DPI. In the present study, particles in cell method, an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is used to simulate the flow in an inhaler. The number of uncertain parameters, including properties of particles, fluidizing agents properties, initial/boundary conditions, and numerical parameters related to PIC simulations, is fourteen. The residence time of 280 PIC simulations for different values of the uncertain parameters is used to test/train a data-driven framework. The values of the uncertain parameters are generated via the Latin Hypercube Sampling method and a normal distribution. The trained algorithm is used to predict the residence time for various uncertain parameters. This framework is used to carry out the sensitivity analysis to find the most influential settings on the residence time of the particles in the inhaler. The optimum parameters of the most influential parameters for a given residence time are obtained via an efficient global optimization method in the Dakota toolkit and a data-driven framework. 


Parametric Optimization of a Dry Powder Inhaler

Division / Sponsors: 
Heat Transfer Division (HTD), Fluids Engineering Division (FED)

Heat Transfer Summer Conference
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/HT/HT2020/volume/83709

18th International Conference on Nanochannels, Microchannels, and Minichannels
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICNMM/ICNMM2020/volume/83693

Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting
Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2020/volume/83716

HT-ICNMM2020 - Virtual Conference, SHTC - Virtual Conference, FEDSM2020 - Virtual Conference

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