SUMMARYThe complexities in the flow pattern in a cavo-pulmonary vascular system-after application of the Fontan procedure in the vicinity of the superior vena cava, inferior vena cava, and the confluence at the Tjunction-are analysed. A characteristic-based split (CBS) finite element scheme involving the artificial compressibility approach is employed to compute the resulting flow. Benchmarking of the CBS scheme is carried out using standard problems and with the flow features observed in an experimental model with the help of a dye visualization technique in model scale. The transient flow variations in a total cavo-pulmonary connection (TCPC) under pulsatile conditions are investigated and compared with flow visualization studies. In addition to such qualitative flow investigations, quantitative analysis of energy loss and haemodynamic stresses have also been performed. The comparisons show good agreement between the numerical and experimental flow patterns. The numerically predicted shear stress values indicate that the pulsatile flow condition is likely to be more severe than steady flow, with regard to the long-term health of the surgically corrected TCPC.

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The restaurant industry is becoming more important in generating income for many nations and hence the factors affecting the restaurant service performance need to be well managed. Therefore, this paper aims to explore and validate the importance of servicescape, human service, food quality and price from the customers' perspective. The restaurant customers in Malaysia, South Africa and India participated in the study. Duly completed structured questionnaires were collected. The study reveals that key determinants on satisfaction and loyalty were mainly human service and food quality.

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SUMMARYA transient haemodynamic study in a model cavopulmonary vascular system has been carried out for a typical range of parameters using a finite element-based Navier-Stokes solver. The focus of this study is to investigate the influence of non-Newtonian behaviour of the blood on the haemodynamic quantities, such as wall shear stress (WSS) and flow pattern. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is based on an artificial compressibility characteristic-based split (AC-CBS) scheme, which has been adopted to solve the Navier-Stokes equations in space-time domain. A power law model has been implemented to characterize the shear thinning nature of the blood depending on the local strain rate. Using the computational model, numerical investigations have been performed for Newtonian and non-Newtonian flows for different frequencies and input pulse forms. The haemodynamic quantities observed in total cavopulmonary connection (TCPC) for the above conditions suggest that there are considerable differences in average (about 25-40%) and peak (about 50%) WSS distributions, when the non-Newtonian behaviour of the blood is taken into account. The lower WSS levels observed for non-Newtonian cases point to the higher risk of lesion formation, especially at higher pulsation frequencies. A realistic pulse form is relatively safer than a sinusoidal pulse as it has more energy distributed in the higher harmonics, which results in higher average WSS values. The present study highlights the importance of including non-Newtonian shear thinning behaviour for modelling blood flow in the vicinity of repaired arterial connections.