Oscillatory flow and mass transport in a coronary artery

Abstract

Pulsatile flow is intrinsic to the cardiovascular system and is driven by the rhythmic beating of the heart. As a system for mass transport, the cardiovascular system hosts a variety of biochemical and cellular species whose transport is subjected to the corresponding flow oscillations. The influence is most prevalent near the heart and particularly within arteries, where pressure fluctuations are most significant. This makes modelling of long-term mass transport difficult to evaluate, since intermediate oscillations need to be explicitly resolved. By applying Reynolds averaging to the governing flow and mass transport equations on a representative period of oscillation, this problem may be alleviated. However, doing so introduces extra terms akin to the Reynolds stresses in the flow equations as well as perturbed-flux terms in the mass transport equations. These terms are investigated in the present study and their distributions assessed. A human right coronary artery is used as the subject geometry, wherein the oscillatory transport behaviour of blood flow and low density lipoprotein is studied.