Effect of surface irregularities on unsteady pulsatile flow in a compliant artery

Of concern in the paper is an analytical study of pulsatile blood flow in an irregular stenosed arterial segment through a mathematical model. The model is two-dimensional and axisymmetric with an outline of the stenosis obtained from a three-dimensional casting of a mildly stenosed artery [L. Back, Y. Cho, D. Crawford, R. Cuffel, Effect of mild atherosclerosis on flow resistance in a coronary artery casting of man, J. Biomech. Eng. 106 (1984) 48-53]. The combined influence of an asymmetric shape and surface irregularities of the constriction has been explored in a computational study of blood flow through arterial stenosis with 48% areal occlusion. The moving wall of the artery is included to be anisotropic, linear, viscoelastic, incompressible circular cylindrical membrane shell. The effect of the surrounding connective tissues on the motion of the arterial wall is also paid due attention. Results are also obtained for a smooth stenosis model and also for a stenosis model representative by the cosine curve. An extensive quantitative analysis has been performed in non-uniform non-staggered grids through numerical computations for the effect of surface irregularities on the flow velocity, the flux, the resistive impedance and on the wall shear stress through their graphical representations so as to validate the applicability of such an improved mathematical model. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.