A stabilized mixed finite element method for shear-rate dependent non-Newtonian fluids: 3D benchmark problems and application to blood flow in bifurcating arteries

This paper presents a stabilized mixed finite element method for shear-rate dependent fluids. The nonlinear viscosity field is a function of the shear-rate and varies uniformly in space and in time. The stabilized form is developed via application of Variational Multiscale (VMS) framework to the underlying generalized Navier-Stokes equation. Linear and quadratic tetrahedral and hexahedral elements are employed with equal-order interpolations for the velocity and pressure fields. A variety of benchmark problems are solved to assess the stability and accuracy properties of the resulting method. The method is then applied to non-Newtonian shear-rate dependent flows in bifurcating artery geometry, and significant non-Newtonian fluid effects are observed. A comparative study of the proposed method shows that the additional computational costs due to the nonlinear shear-rate dependent viscosity are only ten percent more than the computational cost for a Newtonian model.