Visualization and computation of the flow of a highly shear-thinning liquid past the axisymmetric contraction-expansion: application to blood flow through stenotic vessels

摘要

Stenosis is a constriction or narrowing of a duct or passage. This word is often used to refer to constrictions that occur in blood vessels, especially arteries. A stenotic vessel generally causes blood flow stagnation and hence formation of thrombus, which may be rather harmful to the human physiology. In this work we perform flow visualization experiments and finite-volume computation to study the flow of an yield-stress (or highly shear-thinning) liquid through a tube in the neighborhood of an axisymmetric constriction. The rheology of the liquid was chosen to be close to the one of blood with 55% hematocrit. Reynolds and Yield number values characteristic to different arteries have been studied, as well as different levels of constriction. Results for a Newtonian liquid were also obtained, for comparison purposes. Numerical solutions of the mass and momentum balance equations were obtained. In these solutions it was assumed that the materials behave like a Generalized Newtonian Liquid with a biviscosity function, which mimics closely the Herschel-Bulkley equation but allows deformation below the yield stress limit. Among other findings, it has been observed that the non-Newtonian rheology causes a significant change in the flow pattern in the neighborhood of the stenosis. Because the conditions for thrombus formation are directly related to the flow pattern, studies of the flow through stenotic vessels that assume a Newtonian rheology may lead to erroneous conclusions.