Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Pulsatile Flows through an Artery with Stenosis

Abstract

The current study presents three-dimensional modeling and analysis of blood flow through artery stenosis under several variants of pulsatile flow to mimic the atherosclerosis artery disease. The study considered Newtonian and non-Newtonian blood flow models and solved the three-dimensional laminar and unsteady Navier-Stokes (NS) equations for different inlet velocity profiles. The Carreau Yasuda model was used for hemodynamics modeling of fluid viscosity. A comparative analysis was carried out for Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid models under several simple pulsatile, equivalent pulsatile and physiological velocity profiles. The non-Newtonian fluid exhibited a higher centerline velocity. Wall shear stresses, shear strain rates, velocity fields, and vortex distribution for Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid flows show significant differences. A higher wall shear was noticed near the stenosis. The vortex formed near the stenosis shifts to upstream and downstream of the stenosis with the change of velocity pulse. The velocity profile deflates more for non-Newtonian flows than the Newtonian flows.