Two-fluid non-linear model for flow in catheterized blood vessels

Blood flow through a catheterized artery is analyzed, assuming the flow is steady and blood is treated as a two-fluid model with the suspension of all the erythrocytes in the core region as a Casson fluid and the plasma in the peripheral region as a Newtonian fluid. The expressions for velocity, flow rate, wall shear stress and frictional resistance are obtained. The variations of these flow quantities with yield stress, catheter radius ratio and peripheral layer thickness are discussed. It is noticed that the velocity and flow rate decrease while the wall shear stress and resistance to flow increase when the yield stress or the catheter radius ratio increases while all the other parameters were held fixed. It is found that the velocity and flow rate increase while the wall shear stress and frictional resistance decrease with the increase of the peripheral layer thickness. The estimates of the increase in the frictional resistance are significantly very small for the present two-fluid model than those of the single-fluid Casson model. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.