Effects of fluid recirculation on mass transfer from the arterial surface to flowing blood

• Published in: Acta mechanica Sinica 2012-06, Vol.28 (3), p.904-910
• Main Authors: Zhang, Zhi-Guo, Zhang, Xi-Wen, Liu, Ying-Xi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blood; Cholesterol; Classical and Continuum Physics; Computational fluid dynamics; Computational Intelligence; Efflux; Engineering; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Fluid flow; Incompressible flow; Lipids; Mass transfer; Research Paper; Theoretical and Applied Mechanics; 传质; 低密度脂蛋白; 动脉壁; 动脉粥样硬化; 循环流动; 血液; 表面; 非牛顿流体
• ISSN: 0567-7718; 1614-3116
• DOI: 10.1007/s10409-012-0068-9

The effect of disturbed flow on the mass trans- fer from arterial surface to flowing blood was studied nu- merically, and the results were compared with that of our previous work. The arterial wall was assumed to be vis- coelastic and the blood was assumed to be incompressible and non-Newtonian fluid, which is more close to human arte- rial system. Numerical results indicated that the mass trans- fer from the arterial surface to flowing blood in regions of disturbed flow is positively related with the wall shear rates and it is significantly enhanced in regions of disturbed flow with a local minimum around the reattachment point which is higher than the average value of the downstream. There- fore, it may be implied that the accumulation of cholesterol or lipids within atheromatous plaques is not caused by the reduced efflux of cholesterol or lipids, but by the infiltration of the LDL （low-density lipoprotein） from the flowing blood to the arterial wall.