On arterial blood flow in the presence of an overlapping stenosis

We consider the problem of blood flow in an artery and in the presence of an overlapping stenosis, which is also assumed to have an axisymmetric shape. The blood flow in the arterial tube is assumed to be a suspension of red cells in plasma. The present formulation makes use of the variable fluid viscosity modeling that takes into account the amount of red cells in the blood fluid flow system. Using both analytical and computational methods, we determined and calculated the expressions for various quantities such as the axial flow velocity, pressure gradient, pressure drop, impedance, shear stress at the throats and at the critical height. We investigated, in particular, the effects of the hematocrit and constriction due the red cells–plasma combination of the variable blood viscosity and the height of the stenosis on these quantities. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.