Pulsatile flow in curved elastic tubes

Wall shear stresses are thought to have an influence on the formation of deposits of blood fats on the linings of the arteries, in atherosclerosis. Measuring velocities close to an artery wall to determine wall shears is difficult in view of the thinness of the boundary layer. Analytical solutions are limited to simple geometries and numerical analyses of three-dimensional, unsteady blood flows are expensive in terms of computational time. In the present study, finite element analyses of blood flow in models representative of the human aorta are based on two-dimensional sections in order to reduce the computational requirement. [Continues.]