A Dynamic Model of the Respiratory System

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to examine and extend the studies of some of the earlier workers in the field of mathematical modelling of the respiratory system. The first of these people was Gray (1949) who formulated pulmonary ventilation in relation to (H+), carbon dioxide P_CO2 and oxygen P_O2 tensions of the arterial blood in the steady-state. Gray later joined forces with Grodins et al. (1954) to bring an engineering type of approach to modelling, their model being dynamic in nature. The following decade saw the publication of almost an abundance of related papers, and names such as Defares, Horgan, Lange, Milhorn, Guyton, Yamamoto and Longobardo come easily to mind. Priban and Fincham (1965) suggested a model with hill-climbing features and a hierarchically structured controller but did not give specific equations.