Artery curvatures, where disturbed flow patterns are expected, are preferred sites of formation of atherosclerosis. Experimental studies have shown that low and oscillating wall shear stress (WSS) plays an important role in the development and progression of atherosclerosis. Accurate estimation of these biomechanical parameters is important to assess the risk of atherosclerosis formation. The coupled effects of non-Newtonian behavior of blood and artery wall flexibility for the transient blood flow through an idealized curved coronary artery are investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as well as fluid–structure interaction (FSI) simulations. The choice of fluid model, Carreau and Newtonian, was found to impact the time averaged and minimum WSS values. The effects of wall deformation on time averaged wall shear tress were negligible. However, a comparison of temporal minima of WSS along the curvature showed significant variations between CFD and FSI simulations. Since low WSS values are crucial in the prediction of atherosclerosis development, it is concluded that both the non-Newtonian behavior of blood and the wall flexibility should be considered for computational studies.

The present numerical study deals with a mathematical model representing mass transfer in blood flow under stenotic condition. Streaming blood is considered as a non-Newtonian fluid characterized by Carreau fluid model and the vessel wall is taken to be flexible. The nonlinear pulsatile flow phenomenon is governed by the Navier-Stokes equations together with the continuity equation while that of mass transfer is governed by the convection-diffusion equation coupled with the velocity field. A finite difference scheme is developed to solve these equations accompanied bysuitable initial and boundary conditions. Results obtained are examined for numerical stability up to wanted degree of correctness. Various significant hemodynamic parameters are examined for additional qualitative insight of the flow-field and concentration-field over the entire arterial segment with the help of the obtained numerical results. Comparisons are made with the available results in open literature and good agreement has been achieved between these two results. Comparisons have been made to understand the effects of viscosity models for Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids and also for rigid and flexible arteries.

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