Work of breathing Work of breathing Work of breathing (WOB) is the energy expended to inhale and exhale a breathing gas. It is usually expressed as work per unit volume, for example, joules/litre, or as a work rate (power), such as joules/min or equivalent units, as it is not particularly useful without a reference to volume or time. It can be calculated in terms of the pulmonary pressure multiplied by the change in pulmonary volume, or in terms of the oxygen consumption attributable to breathing. In a normal resting state the work of breathing constitutes about 5% of the total body oxygen consumption.
Elastic energy of compressible fluids, and especially gases, demonstrates the essence of elastic energy with negligible complication. The simple thermodynamic formula: formula_2 where dU is an infinitesimal change in recoverable internal energy "U", "P" is the uniform pressure (a force per unit area) applied to the material sample of interest, and "dV" is the infinitesimal change in volume that corresponds to the change in internal energy. The minus sign appears because "dV" is negative under compression by a positive applied pressure which also increases the internal energy. Upon reversal, the work that is done "by" a system is the negative of the