Figure 5.
The effect of membrane stiffness on growing tumor clusters in 2D simple ducts. The cell-BM adhesiveness is fixed (θ = 90°). The pressure field (background), tumor (red; ϕT = 0.5 contours) and BM (green; ψ = 0.5 contours) and necrotic core (magenta; ϕD = 0.5 contours) are shown for different membrane stiffnesses: [a]: A = 0.01; [b]: A = 2.0; [c]: A = 5.0. In [d], the membrane is not allowed to deform and induce stresses. As A increases, the BM deformation decreases. When the membrane is fixed, there are no restoring forces and tumors grow more freely than those with large A. The contact angle θ = 90°, and other parameters are shown in Table 1.