Pulsatile flow of Herschel–Bulkley fluid through catheterized arteries – A mathematical model

The pulsatile flow of blood through catheterized artery has been studied in this paper by modeling blood as Herschel–Bulkley fluid and the catheter and artery as rigid coaxial circular cylinders. The Herschel–Bulkley fluid has two parameters, the yield stress θ and the power index n. Perturbation method is used to solve the resulting quasi-steady nonlinear coupled implicit system of differential equations. The effects of catheterization and non-Newtonian nature of blood on yield plane locations, velocity, flow rate, wall shear stress and longitudinal impedance of the artery are discussed. The existence of two yield plane locations is investigated and their dependence on yield stress θ, amplitude A, and time t are analyzed. The width of the plug core region increases with increasing value of yield stress at any time. The velocity and flow rate decrease, whereas wall shear stress and longitudinal impedance increase for increasing value of yield stress with other parameters held fixed. On the other hand, the velocity, flow rate and wall shear stress decrease but resistance to flow increases as the catheter radius ratio (ratio of catheter radius to vessel radius) increases with other parameters fixed. The results for power law fluid, Newtonian fluid and Bingham fluid are obtained as special cases from this model.