Simulated Blood Transport of Plasma Proteins in a T-Junction With Porous Walls

Regions of arterial curvatures and bifurcations are often prone to atheroscierosis. In these unique arterial sections which exhibit very low shear stress, blood flow is characterized by separation, recirculation and stagnation. The localized features impact the transport of the principal atherogenic plasma component: namely, low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Serum albumin transport is used to approximate LDL transport as has been used previously. A complete description of the flow and LDL transport involves application of the momentum balance equation and diffusion equation involving advective and diffusion terms. We use the power law model to represent the rheology of blood. Modeling the permeability of the arterial wall on the other hand is accomplished by using pore-slit theory which takes into account the ultra-structure of the arterial wall. These models result in a system of non-linear partial differential equations of the second order to be solved in a three-dimensional problem domain. The implementation of the finite element method is carried out using the software package FIDAP 8.7. In the numeric model of our investigation we vary the permeability of the porous wall to provide simulation with wall transmural Peclet numbers ranging from 0.1 to 60. Our work simulates non-Newtonian blood flow and transport of plasma protein in porous arterial walls and highlights new advances in experimental and computational techniques.