A Cell Damages Study in Pulsatile Blood Flow through Two- and Three-Dimensional Obstructed Vessels Using the Cosserat Continuum Approach

Abstract

Pulsatile blood flow through both axisymmetric and asymmetric stenotic vessels has been analyzed numerically using the Cosserat continuum to study the possibility of cell damages in it. Transition to turbulence damages the wall and blood cells by two different mechanisms: high viscous shear stresses near the wall and vorticities with Kolmogorov length scale. In the present work, the model of micropolar fluid flow has been introduced to describe the characteristic length of flow particles, model the laminar, transition and turbulent regimes with Stokes layer formation in pulsatile cycle of blood flow, and calculate the Kolmogorov microscale of eddies and the additional shear stress that is produced by the microrotation viscosity of particles in real flow. The model of pulsatile micropolar fluid flow through axisymmetric (two-dimensional) and asymmetric (three-dimensional) stenosed arteries has been solved numerically using finite difference scheme by exploiting a mesh generation technique with a few transformations that lead to a rectangular grid in the computational plane. The governing equations of the two-dimensional model have been solved with stream function-microrotation method and the high shear stresses have been obtained about 70% smaller than the three-dimensional models with similar obstruction percent.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Cell damage mechanisms
• micropolar fluid
• pulsatile blood flow
• stenosis
• turbulent flow

Notes

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