A numerical investigation of flows of shear-thinning fluids with applications to blood rheology
✍ Scribed by J. Hron; J. Málek; S. Turek
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 254 KB
- Volume
- 32
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0271-2091
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✦ Synopsis
A new solver is presented for the flow of power-law fluids that extends a solver developed by Turek [FEATFLOW. Finite Element Software for the Incompressible Navier -Stokes Equations, User Manual. Release 1.1, Technical Report, 1998] for the Navier-Stokes fluid. This solver is convenient for simulating efficiently both steady and unsteady flows of shear-dependent fluids in a complex geometry. To illustrate the ability of the solver, two specific problems are chosen. First, steady flows of power-law fluids are studied in corrugated channels, and qualitative comparisons with real experiments are carried out. Attention is paid to the dependence of friction factor and dimensionless normal stress amplitude on the aspect ratio (amplitude versus wavelength of the sinusoidal channel) and to the occurrence of secondary flows. It is shown that the aspect ratio is not a sensible non-dimensional number in this geometry. Second, unsteady (pulsatile) flows of the power-law fluid (i.e. blood under certain circumstances) are simulated in the presence of stenosis and a very good coincidence with recent numerical studies is obtained. The description of the numerical scheme and theoretical background are also outlined.