Model of Nonlinear Viscoelastic Wall Rheology Applied to Arterial Dynamics

Abstract

In modern cardiovascular research, one of the fundamental problems is the accurate determination of local flow patterns inside large arteries and their relation with pressure waves generated by the heart. Data for blood flow rates, wall shear stresses, and detailed velocity profiles (with localization of inflexion points, recirculation zone, and boundary layer separation) are necessary to study transport phenomena related to atherogenesis or instability and turbulence generation mechanism. Theoretic and experimental models for local hemodynamic studies, as they have most often been designed in the past, do not take into account the motion of the wall and, for analytic and experimental simplification purposes, consider only the rigid wall case. Nevertheless, in regard to the large strain generated inside the arterial tissues, radial motion of the boundary and associated convective effects in the blood dynamics have to be considered if a rigorous description of the hemodynamic events is required.