A non-Newtonian fluid model for blood flow through arteries under stenotic conditions

This paper presents an analytical study on the behaviour of blood flow through an arterial segment having a mild stenosis. The artery has been treated as a thin-walled initially stressed orthotropic non-linear viscoelastic cylindrical tube filled with a non-Newtonian fluid representing blood. The analysis is restricted to propagation of small-amplitude harmonic waves, generated due to blood flow whose wave length is large compared to the radius of the arterial segment. For the equations of motion of the arterial wall consideration is made of a pair of appropriate equations derived by using suitable constitutive relations and the principle of superimposition of a small additional deformation on a state of known finite deformation. It has been shown through numerical computations of the resulting analytical expressions that the resistance to flow and the wall shear increase as the size of the stenosis increases. A quantitative analysis is also made for the frequency variation of the flow rate at different locations of the artery, as well as of the phase velocities and transmission per wavelength.