Numerical Analysis of Blood Flow in Stenosed Channels

Wall shear rates and pressure developed in blood vessels play an important role on the development of some clinical problems such as atherosclerosis and thrombosis. In the present work, blood flow behaviour was numerically studied in simplified domains and several relevant local properties were determined. We believe that the obtained results will be useful in the interpretation of some phenomena associated to some clinical problems. To describe the rheological behaviour of blood, three constitutive equations were usedconstant viscosity, power-law and Carreau model. Numerical predictions for the blood flow in stenosed channels were in good agreement with analytical results, indicating that the computational model used to describe the studied problem is reliable. Pressure attains maximum values close to the top of the atheroma and shear rates achieved maximum values at the walls located in the nearby of the atheroma. It was also observed that, with the studied flows, the impact of the non-Newtonian behaviour of the blood on the velocity profiles was not significant. This observation can be explained by the magnitude of the obtained shear rates.

Keywords: Blood, atheroma, power-law model, carreau model, newtonian fluid, computational fluid dynamics, velocity, shear rate, pressure, fanning friction factor