Blood flow subject to a single cycle of body acceleration (Q1063511)

This paper shows that externally-imposed body accelerations have an effect on blood flow proportional to their magnitude. They change the values of flow variables namely flow rate, velocity, acceleration and shear stress. A simple mathematical model of flow in single ateries subject to a pulsating pressure gradient due to the normal heart action as well as body acceleration expressible in terms of unit functions is presented. The equations are solved by using Laplace transforms. It is also shown that an unidirectional body acceleration only changes the average value of flow variables, and not their periodic components. The theoretical results are not compared with experimental data.