Effects of porosity in four-layered non-linear blood rheology in constricted narrow arteries with clinical applications

Abstract

Background and objective: This study aims to investigate the haemodynamical factors with the motive to spell out some useful information for better interpretation and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Numerous researchers theoretically investigated the movement of blood in the vascular system, treating blood as either single-layered or two-layered fluid representation. In this contemporary study, a four-layered fluid model is developed to analyse the rheological elements of blood when it flows via constricted arteries with slight constriction and the arterial wall is considered as porous medium.Methods: The momentum and constitutive equations are solved together with the suitable boundary conditions in an attempt to get the results on the distribution of velocity, volumetric flow rate, pressure gradient, shear stresses at the wall and resistive impedance to flow in which methods of integration and perturbation are utilized. The analytical/numerical solutions and graphical results are obtained by the extensive use of MATLAB software.Results: It is of importance to state that the magnitude of the shear stresses on the wall reduces with the rise of Darcy number, Weissenberg number and power law index. Velocity of blood however, rises with the upsurge in Darcy slip parameter, Weissenberg number and power law index. It is pertinent to record that when the stenosis depth rises from 0 to 0.15, the ratio of increase in the mean velocity of healthy, anemic and diabetic subjects are recorded as 4.58, 2.62 and 22.44 respectively. It is also found that the ratio of increase in the wall shear stress in the aforementioned states of blood are found to be 4.7, 4.27 and 3.62 respectively when the stenosis depth rises from 0 to 0.15.Conclusion: The nature of increased flow resistance in all three different situations such as anemic, healthy, and diabetic shows that the larger the constriction in the artery, the less amount of blood is transported to crucial organs which results in the sudden death of subjects. It is hoped that the outcomes of this study would be useful to medical practitioners and bio-medical engineers in predicting the behavior of blood flow in narrowed blood vessels for a more probable treatment modalities.