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Non-Newtonian and Newtonian blood flow in human aorta: A transient analysis

Kumar D, Vinoth R, Raviraj Adhikari, Vijay Shankar CS

Pulsatile blood flow in an aorta of normal subject is studied by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The main intention of this study is to determine the influence of the non-Newtonian nature of blood on a pulsatile flow through an aorta. The usual Newtonian model of blood viscosity and a non- Newtonian blood model are used to study the velocity distributions, wall pressure and wall shear stress in the aorta over the entire cardiac cycle. Realistic boundary conditions are applied at various branches of the aorta model. The difference between non-Newtonian and Newtonian blood flow models is investigated at four different time instants in the fifth cardiac cycle. This study revealed that, the overall velocity distributions and wall pressure distributions of the aorta for a non-Newtonian fluid model are similar to the same obtained from Newtonian fluid model but the non-Newtonian nature of blood caused a considerable increase in Wall Shear Stress (WSS) value. The maximum wall shear stress value in the aorta for Newtonian fluid model was 241.706 Pa and for non-Newtonian fluid model was 249.827 Pa. Based on the results; it is observed that the non-Newtonian nature of blood affects WSS value. Therefore, it is concluded that the non-Newtonian flow model for blood has to be considered for the flow simulation in aorta of normal subject.