Blood flow through a stenosed artery bifurcation under the effects of gravity

Abstract

Circulatory system in human body is built up by network of blood vessels which includes numerous bifurcations. This study presents the influences of bifurcation geometry under the effects of gravity and an irregular stenosis. Along the studied vessel, blood is treated as an incompressible Newtonian fluid. In this paper, an unsteady two-dimensional nonlinear model is developed, where significant gravity term are added to the governing equations. The selected numerical method for the problem is the Marker and Cell (MAC) method based on finite difference approximations. The governing equations are discretized to uniform staggered grids before developing the algorithm in Matlab software. Furthermore, successive-over-relaxation (S.O.R.) method is used to solve the Poisson equation of pressure. Then, pressure-velocity corrector is implied to improve accuracy of the results obtained. The results are presented graphically.