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Mathematical Modeling of the Blood-Atheroma Plaque Interaction
by
Nader El Khatib
University of Lyon, France
Coauthors: Stephane Genieys genieys@math.univ-lyon1.fr and Vitaly Volpert volpert@math.univ-lyon1.fr
The inflammatory reaction of atherosclerosis leads to the formation of an atheroma plaque in the blood vessel. The interaction between the blood and the plaque may have very dangerous consequences such as the rupture of the plaque liberating solid parts in the blood flow that can lead to a heart attack. The blood-plaque interaction also produces some recirculations downstream of the plaque, and these recirculations can give rise to the coagulation of the blood and the formation of a clot that can block the blood flow too. In this paper we study the interaction between the blood flow and the atheroma plaque using a fluid-structure interaction model. The blood is considered as a non-Newtonian fluid with a variable viscosity defined by the Carreau's law. We investigate the influence of this Non-newtonian variable viscosity on the plaque displacement (and hence the risk of plaque rupture) and on the blood flow recirculations (and hence the risk of blood clot formation). The atheroma plaque is composed of a lipid pool and a fibrous cap and both are considered as hyper elastic materials. The parameters of these materials are taken from experimental data, as well as the parameters of Carreau's law for the blood.
The simulations show that the usual Newtonian models significantly underestimate the recirculations and overestimate the plaque displacement.
Date received: May 10, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cawd-74.