A non-linear fluid suspension model for blood flow

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-linear suspension model for blood flow that captures complex rheological behaviors like shear-thinning and cell migration, offering a computationally efficient alternative to detailed two-fluid models.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel non-linear blood flow model incorporating shear-dependent viscosity and RBC migration, reducing computational complexity compared to traditional two-fluid models.

Findings

Model reproduces key features of two-fluid models

Captures shear-thinning and hematocrit effects

Demonstrates efficiency in simple flow simulations

Abstract

Motivated by the complex rheological behaviors observed in small/micro scale blood vessels, such as the Fahraeus effect, plasma-skimming, shear-thinning, etc., we develop a non-linear suspension model for blood. The viscosity is assumed to depend on the volume fraction (hematocrit) and the shear rate. The migration of the red blood cells (RBCs) is studied using a concentration flux equation. A parametric study with two representative problems, namely simple shear flow and a pressure driven flow demonstrate the ability of this reduced-order model to reproduce several key features of the two-fluid model (mixture theory approach), with much lower computational cost.