Wall shear rates and pressure developed in blood vessels play an important role on the
development of some clinical problems such as atherosclerosis and thrombosis. In the present
work, blood flow behaviour was numerically studied in simplified domains and several
relevant local properties were determined. We believe that the obtained results will be
useful in the interpretation of some phenomena associated to some clinical problems. To
describe the rheological behaviour of blood, three constitutive equations were usedconstant
viscosity, power-law and Carreau model. Numerical predictions for the blood
flow in stenosed channels were in good agreement with analytical results, indicating
that the computational model used to describe the studied problem is reliable. Pressure
attains maximum values close to the top of the atheroma and shear rates achieved
maximum values at the walls located in the nearby of the atheroma. It was also
observed that, with the studied flows, the impact of the non-Newtonian behaviour of the
blood on the velocity profiles was not significant. This observation can be explained by
the magnitude of the obtained shear rates.
Keywords: Blood, atheroma, power-law model, carreau model, newtonian fluid,
computational fluid dynamics, velocity, shear rate, pressure, fanning friction factor
