A 2D Mathematical Model of Blood Flow and its Interactions in an Atherosclerotic Artery

Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena, 6 (2014), 32-54
http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/mmnp/20149605

A stenosis is the narrowing of the artery, this narrowing is usually the result of the formation of an atheromatous plaque infiltrating gradually the artery wall, forming a bump in the ductus arteriosus. This arterial lesion falls within the general context of atherosclerotic arterial disease that can affect the carotid arteries, but also the arteries of the heart (coronary), arteries of the legs (PAD), the renal arteries... It can cause a stroke (hemiplegia, transient paralysis of a limb, speech disorder, sailing before the eye). In this paper we study the blood-plaque and blood-wall interactions using a fluid-structure interaction model. We first propose a 2D analytical study of the generalized Navier-Stokes equations to prove the existence of a weak solution for incompressible non-Newtonian fluids with non standard boundary conditions. Then, coupled, based on the results of the theoretical study approach is given. And to form a realistic model, with high accuracy, additional conditions due to fluid-structure coupling are proposed on the border undergoing inetraction. This coupled model includes (a) a fluid model, where blood is modeled as an incompressible non-Newtonian viscous fluid, (b) a solid model, where the arterial wall and atherosclerotic plaque will be treated as non linear hyperelastic solids, and (c) a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model where interactions between the fluid (blood) and structures (the arterial wall and atheromatous plaque) are conducted by an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method that allows accurate fluid-structure coupling.