Effect of non-Newtonian property of blood on flow through a stenosed tube

It is well known that the fluid dynamics of arterial blood flow plays an important role in arterial diseases. Periodic blood flow through a stenosed tube was analyzed numerically. The bi-viscosity model is used as a constitutive equation for blood, and the flow is assumed to be periodic, incompressible and axisymmetric. Effects of pulsation and the rheological property of blood are considered. The flow pattern, separated region and the distributions of pressure and shear stress at the wall are obtained. The results show that the non-Newtonian property reduces the strength of the vortex downstream of stenosis and has considerable influence on the flow even at high Stokes and Reynolds numbers, provided that pulsatile flow has a stagnant period. (C) 1998 The Japan Society of Fluid Mechanics Incorporated and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.