Atherosclerosis is a vascular disease caused by the formation of atheromatous plaques inside the inner layer of artery walls which can create a localized blockage called stenosis. The stenosis prevents sufficient blood supply to downside tissues resulting in the shortage of oxygen and glucose needed for metabolism. Presence of a stenosis can further cause remarkable variations in flow parameters of blood [Boron and Boulpaep (2012)]. The original flow which is believed to be laminar in most situations, may turns out to turbulent by the geometric perturbation created by the stenosis. Flow may evolve to fully turbulent or it may re-laminarise back according to the intensity of the perturbation. It is very difficult to recreate the actual flow conditions in a laboratory environment to study the flow physics by experimental analysis due to the complexity of the geometric domain and biological factors. So, numerical simulations based on techniques of computational fluid dynamics have particular importance in the study of flow in the presence of a stenosis. In this work pulsatile blood flow through an asymmetrically stenosed artery is analysed using finite volume method. Turbulent characteristics of the flow is modeled using Large eddy simulation (LES) technique and Carreau model is used to estimate the effect of non-Newtonian nature of blood. The effect of stenosis on the flow parameters downstream of stenosis is thoroughly studied and presented in detail.

Keywords: Hemodynamics, Blood flow, Stenosis, Turbulence.