Numerical simulation of physiologically relevant pulsatile flow of blood with shear-rate-dependent viscosity in a stenosed blood vessel

Pulsatile flow of blood in a blood vessel having time-dependent shape (diameter) is investigated numerically in order to understand some important physiological phenomena in arteries. A smooth axi-symmetric cosine shaped constriction is considered. To mimic the realistic situation as far as possible, viscosity of blood is taken to be non-uniform, a shear-thinning viscosity model is considered and a physiologically relevant pulsatile flow is introduced. Taking advantage of axi-symmetry in the proposed problem, the stream function-vorticity formulation is used to solve the governing equations for blood flow. Effect of different parameters associated with the problem on the flow pattern has been investigated and disparities from the Newtonian case are discussed in detail.