Copyright © 2012 D. S. Sankar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The shear augmented dispersion of solutes in blood flow (i) through circular tube and (ii) between parallel flat plates is analyzed mathematically, treating blood as Herschel-Bulkley fluid model. The resulting system of nonlinear differential equations are solved with the appropriate boundary conditions, and the expressions for normalized velocity, concentration of the fluid in the core region and outer region, flow rate, and effective axial diffusivity are obtained. It is found that the normalized velocity of blood, relative diffusivity, and axial diffusivity of solutes are higher when blood is modeled by Herschel-Bulkley fluid rather than by Casson fluid model. It is also noted that the normalized velocity, relative diffusivity, and axial diffusivity of solutes are higher when blood flows through circular tube than when it flows between parallel flat plates.