Non-Newtonian effects of blood flow in complete coronary and femoral bypasses

Abstract

A numerical investigation of non-Newtonian steady blood flow in a complete idealized 3D bypass model with occluded native artery is presented in order to study the non-Newtonian effects for two different sets of physiological parameters (artery diameter and inlet Reynolds number), which correspond to average coronary and femoral native arteries. Considering the blood to be a generalized Newtonian fluid, the shear-dependent viscosity is evaluated using the Carreau–Yasuda model. All numerical simulations are performed by an incompressible Navier–Stokes solver developed by the authors, which is based on the pseudo-compressibility approach and the cell-centred finite volume method defined on unstructured hexahedral computational grid. For the time integration, the fourth-stage Runge–Kutta algorithm is used. The analysis of numerical results obtained for the non-Newtonian and Newtonian flows through the coronary and femoral bypasses is focused on the distribution of velocity and wall shear stress in the entire length of the computational model, which consists of the proximal and distal native artery and the connected end-to-side bypass graft.