A HYPERBOLIC SYSTEM OF CONSERVATION LAWS FOR FLUID FLOWS THROUGH COMPLIANT AXISYMMETRIC VESSELS

We are concerned with the derivation and analysis of one-dimensional hyperbolic systems of conservation laws modelling fluid flows such as the blood flow through compliant axisymmetric vessels. Early models derived are nonconservative and/or nonhomogeneous with measure source terms, which are endowed with infinitely many Riemann solutions for some Riemann data. In this paper, we derive a one-dimensional hyperbolic system that is conservative and homogeneous. Moreover, there exists a unique global Riemann solution for the Riemann problem for two vessels with arbitrarily large Riemann data, under a natural stability entropy criterion. The Riemann solutions may consist of four waves for some cases. The system can also be written as a 3 x 3 system for which strict hyperbolicity fails and the standing waves can be regarded as the contact discontinuities corresponding to the second family with zero eigenvalue.