Time scales small parameters

A parameter indicating whether viscoelastic effects are important is the Deborah number, which is the ratio of the characteristic relaxation time of the fluid to the characteristic time scale of the flow. For small Deborah numbers, the relaxation is fast compared to the characteristic time of the flow, and the fluid behavior is purely viscous. For veiy large Deborah numbers, the behavior closely resembles that of an elastic solid. 

In order to examine the nature of the friction coefficient it is useful to consider the various time, space, and mass scales that are important for the dynamics of a B particle. Two important parameters that determine the nature of the Brownian motion are rm = (m/M) /2, that depends on the ratio of the bath and B particle masses, and rp = p/(3M/4ttct3), the ratio of the fluid mass density to the mass density of the B particle. The characteristic time scale for B particle momentum decay is xB = Af/ , from which the characteristic length lB = (kBT/M)i lxB can be defined. In derivations of Langevin descriptions, variations of length scales large compared to microscopic length but small compared to iB are considered. The simplest Markovian behavior is obtained when both rm << 1 and rp 1, while non-Markovian descriptions of the dynamics are needed when rm << 1 and rp > 1 [47]. The other important times in the problem are xv = ct2/v, the time it takes momentum to diffuse over the B particle radius ct, and Tp = cr/Df, the time it takes the B particle to diffuse over its radius. 

Double degeneracy occurs for X = X2 = 0. When Xi and X2 are different from zero but remain small, the following change of parameters, variables, and time scale ... 

Here, w = m, n, and S. V represents the membrane potential, n is the opening probability of the potassium channels, and S accounts for the presence of a slow dynamics in the system. Ic and Ik are the calcium and potassium currents, gca = 3.6 and gx = 10.0 are the associated conductances, and Vca = 25 mV and Vk = -75 mV are the respective Nernst (or reversal) potentials. The ratio r/r s defines the relation between the fast (V and n) and the slow (S) time scales. The time constant for the membrane potential is determined by the capacitance and typical conductance of the cell membrane. With r = 0.02 s and ts = 35 s, the ratio ks = r/r s is quite small, and the cell model is numerically stiff. The calcium current Ica is assumed to adjust immediately to variations in V. For fixed values of the membrane potential, the gating variables n and S relax exponentially towards the voltage-dependent steady-state values noo (V) and S00 (V). Together with the ratio ks of the fast to the slow time constant, Vs is used as the main bifurcation parameter. This parameter determines the membrane potential at which the steady-state value for the gating variable S attains one-half of its maximum value. The other parameters are assumed to take the following values gs = 4.0, Vm = -20 mV, Vn = -16 mV, 9m = 12 mV, 9n = 5.6 mV, 9s = 10 mV, and a = 0.85. These values are all adjusted to fit experimentally observed relationships. In accordance with the formulation used by Sherman et al. [53], there is no capacitance in Eq. (6), and all the conductances are dimensionless. To eliminate any dependence on the cell size, all conductances are scaled with the typical conductance. Hence, we may consider the model to represent a cluster of closely coupled / -cells that share the combined capacity and conductance of the entire membrane area. 

Owing to the presence of the small parameter , the model in Equation (7.1) is stiff and can potentially exhibit a dynamic behavior with multiple time scales. Proceeding in a manner similar to the one adopted in Chapter 6, we define the fast time scale r = t/e and rewrite (7.1) as... 

Equations (7.15) are in the general form of Equations (7.1), with 2 playing the role of the small parameter in the sense used in (7.1). On the other hand, E captures the presence of material streams of vastly different flow rates, which, as we saw in Section 3.5, leads to a time-scale separation in the dynamics of the material-balance variables. 

As we anticipated at the beginning of this section, owing to the presence of the small parameter , the model in Equation (7.18) is still stiff. We will follow the developments in Section 3.5 to investigate its dynamics. To this end, let us define the intermediate stretched time scale iq, and consider the limit of an infinite recycle flow rate, or, equivalently, 1 —> 0 ... 

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