Impact of temperature and concentration dispersion on the physiology of blood nanofluid: links to atherosclerosis

A theoretical model of blood-silver nanofluid flow through an \(\omega \)-shaped tapered stenotic artery in the presence of a catheter is understood in detail. The rheology of the blood is considered as that of a micro-polar fluid. Suspension of the silver nano-particles in the micro-polar fluid is proposed to investigate the temperature and concentration dispersion from the immersed temperature-sensitive drug-coated nano-particles. The effects of velocity discontinuity at the arterial wall in the stenotic and non-stenotic regions are considered. The outer surface of the catheter is layered with the temperature-sensitive, drug-coated nano-particles. The resulting mathematical formulation involving the coupled non-linear momentum, temperature and concentration equations is solved using the Homotopy Perturbation Method. The efficiency and convergence of the method to the modelled equations are discussed in detail. The consequent effects of the fluid and geometric parameters on pressure drop, flow rate, impedance and wall shear stress of the fluid flow are computed. It is noticed that the high volume fraction of the nano-particles in the blood results in high flow velocity, contributing to secondary flow regions, thus resulting in higher shear stress. Such high volume fraction of the nano-particle may lead to the pathological disorder called aneurysm. This physical model has an important application of drug delivery in biomedical and pharmaceutical industry to prevent obstructions in arteries. Further, the results obtained could be very useful in the manufacturing of related artificial devices.