variavel0=<b>Erick Fabrizio Quintella</b> - erick@mec.puc-rio.br PUC-Rio
<b>Paulo Roberto de Souza Mendes</b> - pmendes@mec.puc-rio.br PUC-Rio
<b>Abstract.</b> Stenosis is a constriction or narrowing of a duct or passage. This word is often used to refer to constrictions that occur in blood vessels, especially arteries. A stenotic vessel generally causes blood flow stagnation and hence formation of thrombus, which may be rather harmful to the human physiology. In this work, we extend the methodology to analize the flow of viscoplastic materials through tubes with constant cross-section to study the flow of blood (a highly shear-thinning, or yield stress, material) through a tube in the neighborhood of a constriction. The rheology of blood is chosen to be the one of blood with 54% hematocrit. We calculated Reynolds and yield number values characteristic to different arteries. Also, for comparison purposes, we obtained results for a Newtonian modeling of blood. The results indicate that the non-Newtonian rheology may cause a significant change in the flow pattern in the neighborhood of the stenosis. Because the conditions for thrombus formation are directly related to the flow pattern, studies of the flow through stenotic vessels that assume a Newtonian rheology may lead to erroneous conclusions.
<b>Keywords.</b> stenosed arteries, blood flow, viscoplastic materials, blood rheology.