Harmonic waves in a prestressed thin elastic tube filled with a viscous fluid

In this work a theoretical analysis is presented for wave propagation ina thin-walled prestressed elastic tube filled with a viscous fluid. Thefluid is assumed to be incompressible and Newtonian, whereas the tubematerial is considered to be incompressible, isotropic and elastic.Considering the physiological conditions that the arteries experience, sucha tube is initially subjected to a mean pressure P_i and anaxial stretch _z. If it is assumed that in the course ofblood flow small incremental disturbances are superimposed on this initialfield, then the governing equations of this incremental motion are obtainedfor the fluid and the elastic tube. A harmonic-wave type of solution issought for these field equations and the dispersion relation is obtained.Some special cases, as well as the general case, are discussed and thepresent formulation is compared with some previous works on the samesubject.