Blood viscoelasticity : experimental characterization and 2D-numerical simulation of the blood flow

Abstract

Circulatory system diseases are the main cause of death in Europe and United States of America. This fact has promoted increasing research related to human body biomechanics. In this context, huge increase of computational capacity has become in a valuable tool for cardiovascular disease studies. Blood viscoelastic flow through healthy carotid artery was here studied. Both experimental and computational techniques were carried out in order to simulate a realistic human situation. On the one hand, regarding the experimental study, relaxation tests were performed on blood by using a rheometer. After that, the Generalized Maxwell model was used to fit experimental data time dependence of relaxation modulus. On the other hand, several numerical simulations were carried out by using finite volume methods implemented in open source software (Foam Extend 3.1). The effect of blood viscoelastic behaviour in a common human carotid artery was tested. Results from Viscoelastic and Newtonian models for blood were compared. The main conclusion of the work is that assuming blood as a Newtonian fluid can give rise to wrong predictions, especially at the near wall region.