Application of Immersed Finite Element Method for Modeling non-Newtonian Fluid Around Rigid Bodies

Abstract

The study of blood flow is extremely crucial due to its significant importance in the medical and healthcare field. A major concern in this domain is thrombosis, which involves the formation of blood clots within vessels, causing ischemia, the absence of blood (O2) irrigation in a particular region, and leading to serious complications such as pulmonary embolism, stroke, or heart attack. Given this, understanding how blood flow occurs in this phenomenon is extremely important. The present work employs a combination of an Immersed Finite Element Method (iFEM) with the consideration of blood as an incompressible, non-Newtonian fluid, while the clot is treated as a solid part overlaid on the fluid domain. The current test cases demonstrate promising results, especially considering the simplicity of the proposed formulation for simulating fluidsolid multiphase flows.