Resilience in hierarchical fluid flow networks

Tatyana Gavrilchenko and Eleni Katifori
Phys. Rev. E 99, 012321 – Published 25 January 2019

Abstract

The structure of flow networks determines their function under normal conditions as well as their response to perturbative damage. Brain vasculature often experiences transient or permanent occlusions in the finest vessels, but it is not clear how these microclots affect the large-scale blood flow or to what extent they decrease functionality. Motivated by this, we investigate how flow is rerouted after the occlusion of a single edge in networks with a hierarchy in edge conductances. We find that in two-dimensional networks, vessels formed by highly conductive edges serve as barriers to contain the displacement of flow due to a localized perturbation. In this way, the vein provides shielding from damage to surrounding edges. We show that once the conductance of the vein surpasses an initial minimal value, further increasing the conductance can no longer extend the shielding provided by the vein. Rather, the length scale of the shielding is set by the network topology. Upon understanding the effects of a single vein, we investigate the global resilience of networks with complex hierarchical order. We find that a system of veins arranged in a grid is able to modestly increase the overall network resilience, outperforming a parallel vein pattern.

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  • Received 8 August 2018
  • Revised 6 December 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.012321

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

NetworksPhysics of Living Systems

Authors & Affiliations

Tatyana Gavrilchenko* and Eleni Katifori

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA

  • *tatyanag@sas.upenn.edu

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Issue

Vol. 99, Iss. 1 — January 2019

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