Bubble motion through a generalized power-law fluid flowing in a vertical tube.

Intravascular gas embolism may occur with decompression in space flight, as well as during cardiac and vascular surgery. Intravascular bubbles may be deposited into any end organ, such as the heart or the brain. Surface interactions between the bubble and the endothelial cells lining the vasculature result in serious impairment of blood flow and can lead to heart attack, stroke, or even death. To develop effective therapeutic strategies, there is a need for understanding the dynamics of bubble motion through blood and its interaction with the vessel wall through which it moves. Toward this goal, we numerically investigate the axisymmetric motion of a bubble moving through a vertical circular tube in a shear-thinning generalized power-law fluid, using a front-tracking method. The formulation is characterized by the inlet Reynolds number, capillary number, Weber number, and Froude number. The flow dynamics and the associated wall shear stresses are documented for a combination of two different inlet flow conditions (inlet Reynolds numbers) and three different effective bubble radii (ratio of the undeformed bubble radii to the tube radii). The results of the non-Newtonian model are then compared with that of the model assuming a Newtonian blood viscosity. Specifically, for an almost occluding bubble (effective bubble radius = 0.9), the wall shear stress and the bubble residence time are compared for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian cases. Results show that at low shear rates, for a given pressure gradient the residence time for a non-Newtonian flow is higher than that for a Newtonian flow.