UC Berkeley

Near-wall mass transport plays an important role in many cardiovascular processes, including the initiation of atherosclerosis, endothelial cell vasoregulation, and thrombogenesis. These problems are characterized by large Péclet and Schmidt numbers as well as a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, all of which impose computational difficulties. In this work, we develop an analytical relationship between the flow field and near-wall mass transport for high-Schmidt-number flows. This allows for the development of a wall-shear-stress-driven transport equation that lies on a codimension-one vessel-wall surface, significantly reducing computational cost in solving the transport problem. Separate versions of this equation are developed for the reaction-rate-limited and transport-limited cases, and numerical results in an idealized abdominal aortic aneurysm are compared to those obtained by solving the full transport equations over the entire domain. The reaction-rate-limited model matches the expected results well. The transport-limited model is accurate in the developed flow regions, but overpredicts wall flux at entry regions and reattachment points in the flow.