Effect of a moving boundary on pulsatile flow of incompressible fluid in a tube

Abstract

The pulsatile flow in a pipe with a moving boundary has been studied for a viscous, incompressible fluid by solving the Navier-Stokes equations numerically. The governing equations were formulated in boundary fitted curvilinear coordinates and a finite volume discretization procedure was used to solve the problem. This analysis is based on the assumption that the flow has a simple periodic pulsation and the shape of the wall changes according to the frequency of pulsation. The presence of the moving boundary causes unsteadiness in the flow behaviour as the vibrating wall has a nonlinear interaction with the flow. A detailed analysis of the flow field is presented here for a range of frequencies (5≤α≤10) where α is the reduced frequency parameter and a Reynolds number of 100.