TY - JOUR
TI - Numerical study of the non-Newtonian blood flow in a stenosed artery using two rheological models
AU - Achab Louiza
AU - Mahfoud Mohamed
AU - Benhadid Salah
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2016
VL - 20
IS - 2
SP - 449
EP - 460
PT - Article
AB - The numerical simulation of blood flow in arteries using non-Newtonian  viscosity model, presents two major difficulties; the first one is the  choice of an appropriate constitutive equation, because no one model is  universally accepted as a reflection of the true behavior of blood viscosity  until now. Another difficulty lies in the numerical convergence of the  complex scheme solving the highly non-linear set of equations governing the  blood motion. In this paper, the pulsatile blood flow through an arterial  stenosis has been numerically modeled to evaluate the flow characteristics  and the wall shear stress under physiological conditions. The Navier-Stokes  equations governing the fluid motion are solved using the finite element  method in unsteady two-dimensional case. The behavior of blood is considered  as the Generalized Power-law (Gpl) and Cross models, where the  shear-thinning characteristics of the streaming blood are taken into  account. Constants in the constitutive equations of previous models have  been obtained by fitting experimental viscosity data. The numerical  simulations are performed for a wide range of apparent shear rates (10  s-1-750 s-1) with good convergence of the iterative scheme. Results from the  blood flow simulations indicate that non-Newtonian behavior has considerable  effects on instantaneous flow patterns. However, it seems that the Gpl model  will be slightly better for describing the non-Newtonian characteristics of  blood than the Cross model.