Multi-species viscous models for tissue growth: incompressible limit and qualitative behaviour.

ABSTRACT

We introduce two 2D mechanical models reproducing the evolution of two viscous tissues in contact. Their main property is to model the swirling cell motions while keeping the tissues segregated, as observed during vertebrate embryo elongation. Segregation is encoded differently in the two models by passive or active segregation (based on a mechanical repulsion pressure). We formally compute the incompressible limits of the two models, and obtain strictly segregated solutions. The two models thus obtained are compared. A striking feature in the active segregation model is the persistence of the repulsion pressure at the limit a ghost effect is discussed and confronted to the biological data. Thanks to a transmission problem formulation at the incompressible limit, we show a pressure jump at the tissues' boundaries.