Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2014
A stenosis is the narrowing of the artery, this narrowing is usually the result of theformation of an atheromatous plaque infiltrating gradually the artery wall, forming a bumpin the ductus arteriosus. This arterial lesion falls within the general context ofatherosclerotic arterial disease that can affect the carotid arteries, but also thearteries of the heart (coronary), arteries of the legs (PAD), the renal arteries... It cancause a stroke (hemiplegia, transient paralysis of a limb, speech disorder, sailing beforethe eye). In this paper we study the blood-plaque and blood-wall interactions using afluid-structure interaction model. We first propose a 2D analytical study of thegeneralized Navier-Stokes equations to prove the existence of a weak solution forincompressible non-Newtonian fluids with non standard boundary conditions. Then, coupled,based on the results of the theoretical study approach is given. And to form a realisticmodel, with high accuracy, additional conditions due to fluid-structure coupling areproposed on the border undergoing inetraction. This coupled model includes (a) a fluidmodel, where blood is modeled as an incompressible non-Newtonian viscous fluid, (b) asolid model, where the arterial wall and atherosclerotic plaque will be treated as nonlinear hyperelastic solids, and (c) a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model whereinteractions between the fluid (blood) and structures (the arterial wall and atheromatousplaque) are conducted by an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) method that allowsaccurate fluid-structure coupling.