Pulsatile flow of power-law fluid model for blood flow under periodic body acceleration

Abstract

A mathematical model has been proposed to study the pulsatile flow of a power-law fluid through rigid circular tubes under the influence of a periodic body acceleration. Numerical solutions have been obtained by using finite difference method. The accuracy of the numerical procedure has been checked by comparing the obtained numerical results with other numerical and analytical solutions. It is found that the agreement between them is quite good. Interaction of non-Newtonian nature of fluid with the body acceleration has been investigated by using the physiological data for two particular cases (coronary and femoral arteries). The axial velocity, fluid acceleration, wall shear stress and instantaneous volume flow rate have been computed and their variations with different parameters have been analyzed. The following important observations have been made: (i) The velocity and acceleration profiles can have more than one maxima, this is in contrast with usual parabolic profiles where they have only one maximum at the axis. As n increases, the maxima shift towards the axis; (ii) For the flow with no body acceleration, the amplitude of both, wall shear and flow rate, increases with n, whereas for the flow with body acceleration, the amplitude of wall shear (flow rate) increases (decreases) as n increases; (iii) In the absence of body acceleration, pseudoplastic (dilatant) fluids, with low frequency pulsations, have higher (lower) value of maximum flow rate Q_max than Newtonian fluids, whereas for high frequencies, opposite behavior has been observed; for flow with body acceleration pulsations gives higher (lower) value of Q_max for pseudoplastic (dilatant) fluids than Newtonian fluids.