Abstract:
The proposed study is an attempt to perceive theoretically the heat transfer phenomenon in the flow of temperature-dependent viscous blood through microvessels internally surrounded by a thin layer of endothelial glycocalyx at the wall. While flowing through microvessels, the blood separates into erythrocytes suspended fluid and cell-depleted fluid into core and peripheral regions respectively. Therefore, to best represent the flow of human blood in microvessels, it has been modeled as a two-fluid. Erythrocytes appearing in the core stimulates the non-Newtonian behavior of the fluid is manifested here by Herschel-Bulkley fluid with temperature-dependent viscosity. The plasma surrounded over the blood cells in the peripheral layer is expressed as a Newtonian fluid with constant viscosity. An added advantage of utilizing the Brinkman-Forchheimer equation to govern the flow through the layer of endothelial glycocalyx (EGL) is that it is credible for both small and large Darcy numbers (permeability). Linear approximation of the Reynolds, viscosity model is exercised to obtain the analytical solutions for the governing equations of Herschel-Bulkley fluid flowing through the core region. In the non-porous peripheral region, the analytical solutions have been obtained for Newtonian fluid with constant viscosity directly and in the porous peripheral region, the Brinkman-Forchheimer equation is solved using regular perturbation for large Darcy number and singular perturbation with a matched asymptotic condition for small Darcy number. Analytical expressions for the velocity, flow rate, flow impedance, and temperature field have been obtained for the different regions. Graphical analysis revealing significant results regarding the variable viscosity, thermal conductivity, Grashof number, Forchheimer number, Richardson number, and permeability on the hemodynamical variables are conducted and results are discussed in detail. The study concludes that an EGL adjacent to the vessel wall increase the resistance to blood flow. The notable discovery of the study is that the temperature parameters influence all the quantities and therefore establish that the temperature-dependent viscosity plays a vital role in medical treatments involving temperature variation such as chemotherapy.