Effect of the Blood Vessel Viscoelasticity on the Blood Pressure Wave Propagation (Numerical Analysis Using One-Dimensional Viscoelastic Tube Model)

Abstract

The description of blood flow in vivo is complicated due to the viscoelasticity of vessel walls.However, conventional researches of the effect of the blood vessel viscoelasticity on the blood pressure wave propagation using non-linear one-dimensional models do not take into account the viscoelasticity, despite it being importance in the analysis of pulse wave propagation in arteries.Already, we propose a new generalized arterial viscoelastic model that is suitable for numerical simulations of blood flow in systemic arteries. Simulated results were in good agreement with measurements of pressure waves in a silicone rubber tube. The analytical results indicate that the change in the viscoelasticity influences the damping of the wave amplitude and the wave propagation velocity characteristically. Our results demonstrate that for models to be suitable for quantitative numerical analysis of systemic arteries, they should take into account both of the normalized dynamic modules and the loss tangent of viscoelasticity as a function of the frequency.