DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A NUMERICAL MODEL FOR CONTROLLED INTRAVAGINAL DRUG RELEASING DEVICES

MARQUEZ DAMIAN, SANTIAGO; GRAU RICARDO; MARIANO NICOLAS; NIGRO NORBERTO

Rosario

Congreso; ENIEF 2011; 2011

AMCA

Controlled Intravaginal Drug Releasing (CIDR) devices are often used in veterinary scienceto synchronize cattle estrus. Design process of such devices is strongly based on laboratory and fieldexperimentation. In this scenario, model development is an attractive work since it reduces experimentalresearch time and allows discard preliminary designs and material properties in an easy way. In this line,device re-engineering is an active field of work, looking for lower residual loads, better drug releasingcontrol and lower costs.Based on a novel mathematical model early proposed, a numerical model is developed using a FiniteVolume discretization in order to give an effective tool in CIDR re-engineering and design. The modelrequires coupling between Partial Differential Equations and Ordinary Differential Equations with non-linear sources which represents a big challenge. Moreover, proper discretization leads to highly refinedunstructured meshes being necessary the use of parallel solvers. Taking into account this requirements,implementation via OpenFOAM R libraries is carried out and a parallel solver is obtained. Mathemat-ical model is presented with its physical, mathematical and numerical assumptions. On the other handsoftware implementation details are also discussed. Finally, numerical and experimental results are com-pared showing good agreement.