An analysis of peristaltic transport for flow of a Jeffrey fluid

Summary The peristaltic mechanism of a Jeffrey fluid in a circular tube is investigated. The rheological effects and compressibility of the fluid are taken into account. The modeled equations are solved using perturbation technique when the ratio of the wave amplitude to the radius of the pore is small. In the second order approximation, a net flow due to a travelling wave is obtained and effects of Reynolds number, relaxation and retardation times, compressibility of the fluid and tube radius are studied. It is noticed that for the Jeffrey fluid the back flow only occurs for large values of the relaxation time and small values of the retardation time (less than 10 in the present analysis). Another interesting observation is that oscillatory behavior of the net flow rate in the Jeffrey fluid is less than that of a Maxwell fluid. Several results of other fluid models can be deduced as the limiting cases of our situation.