Flow of a Casson fluid through a stenosed artery subject to periodic body acceleration

1 Department of Mathematics & Computer Science The University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston 7, JAMAICA, WEST INDIES Email: [email protected] 2 Department of Applied Mathematics, Sri Padmavati Women’s University Tirupati, A. P. – 517 502, INDIA Email: [email protected] Abstract: The pulsatile flow of blood through a stenosed artery under the influence of external periodic body acceleration is studied. The effect of non-Newtonian nature of blood in small blood vessels has been taken into account by modeling blood as a Casson fluid. The non-linear coupled equations governing the flow are solved using perturbation analysis assuming that the Womersley frequency parameter is small which is valid for physiological situations in small blood vessels. The effect of pulsatility, stenosis, body acceleration, yield stress of the fluid and pressure gradient on the yield plane locations, velocity distribution, flow rate, shear stress and frictional resistance are investigated. It is noticed that the effect of yield stress and stenosis is to reduce flow rate and increase flow resistance. The impact of body acceleration is to enhance the flow rate and reduces resistance to flow.