Fluid Mechanics and Human Circulation

Angiolo Farina

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica “U. Dini”
Florence, Italy

1 – 6, July 2019
 General Information

1. Mathematical modeling in blood-related topics: i.e.

hematology.
a) Basic blood physiology.
b) Basic fluid mechanics.
c) Mathematical modeling of some specific problems.
d) Qualitative and qualitative analysis of the related
mathematical problems.

2. The course consists of 6 lectures, each lecture

is divided into a theoretical session (2 hours) and an
exercises session (2 hours)
 Course Outline
• Lecture 1: The human circulatory system and basic hemoreology

•Lecture 2: Hemodynamics and microcirculation

•Lecture 3: Hemodynamics and microcirculation

•Lecture 4: Blood filtration in kidneys

•Lecture 5: Extracorporeal Blood Ultrafiltration

•Lecture 6: Extracorporeal Blood Ultrafiltration

 BOOKS

Antonio Fasano Adélia Sequeira

Scientific Manager and R&D Director Instituto Superior Técnico
of FIAB (Italy) Lisboa
Professor Emeritus, Florence
University
Associated to IASI-CNR, Rome

MS&A – Vol. 18
Modeling, Simulation and Applications
Editor-in-chief: prof. Alfio Quarteroni
K.R. Rajagopal
Texas A&M University
C. Truesdell
1919 - 2000
 Y.C. Fung
Emeritus at University of California
San Diego
Lecture 1: The human circulatory system and
basic hemoreology

Theoretical session
Historical remarks
Blood components and human circulatory system
Basic of rheology
Non-Newtonian properties of blood
Constitutive Models for Blood

Exercises session
Flow profiles in cylindrical vessels corresponding to
different rheological model
 
BLOOD IN MEDICINE FROM THE ANTIQUITY TO THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

Egyptians had great familiarity with the inside of the human body
through the practice of mummification. Egyptians knew the main
blood vessels (in number of 46, reaching every part of the body)
and the leading role of heart.

Edwin Smith Papyrus (written around 1700 BC, but based upon
much earlier material),

Ebers Papyrus (existing in a copy of the sixteenth century BC, but

probably having its roots back to 3000 BC),

Kahun Gynecological Papyrus (nineteenth century BC).

The Edwin Smith Papyrus is attributed to a
legendary, semi-divine character, the physician
Imhotep who lived during the twenty seventh
century BC. The papyrus (mainly dealing with
wounds healing), though less naive than
medical doctrines developed much later, can
hardly be considered a really scientific
document and the suggested remedies could
easily be fatal to the patients because they
could produce infections.

Plates vi and vii of the Edwin Smith papyrus

[Rare Book Room, New York Academy of
Medicine]

The Ebers Papyrus

[University of Leipzig
Library]
Egyptians expertise in medicine was deeply revered
even among the Greeks, to the point that it was praised
by Homer in the Odyssey (800 BC).

Homer – Louvre
Museum (Paris)
 Hippocrates (ca. 460 BC–ca. 370 BC)

He conjectured that health depends on the

equilibrium of the four humours (blood, phlegm,
black bile and yellow bile). His theory became an
unquestioned paradigm for centuries.

Bust of Hippocrates
[National
Archaeological
Museum, Athens]
The main merit of Hippocrates was to separate
medicine from religion (that in Greece was then
dominated by the cult of Asklepios or Asclepius)

Capitoline museums
Rome

To our eyes this may look a simple statement, but it

was actually a giant leap towards the evolution of a
scientific basis, though much of ancient medicine was
basically harmful to patients
 Rod of Asclepius
The flag of the World Health
Organization, with a rod of
Asclepius
The emergency services' Star of Life
features a rod of Asclepius
According to the myth the
Rod of Asclepius had
therapeutic powers and
was able to heal any kind
of disease. The snake
represents the healing
power of the god,
symbolized by the reptile's
moult that recalls an
eternal rebirth.
Aristotle (384–322 BC) Palazzo Altemps
(Rome). Bust of
Aristotle

He stated that the heart (for him a three-chambered organ) was

the seat of the soul.

A positive influence of Aristotle on the study of human body came

from his opinion that no one is going to make any use of his body
after death. This encouraged the practice of corpse dissection,
through which many discoveries were made at the time.

Vivisection was performed by Erasistratus (304–250 BC) and

Herophilus (335–280 BC) not only on animals, but also on
criminals who had received a life sentence.
 Galen of Pergamon (131–201)
In Rome he became known as Aelius (Claudius) Galenus.

He adopted Hippocrates’ theory, refining it with the combination of

the four temperaments (choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic)
and the four qualities (cold, warm, moisty, dry).

Galen and Hippocrates in a 12th century

painting (Anagni Cathedral)
Galen distinguished the dark blood, carried by the
veins, from the pneuma, a mixture of “vital spirits,” air,
and a small amount of Blood, transported by the
arteries.

Venous blood was thought to be produced by the liver

from food, after which it flowed outward to the tissues
and was then consumed as fuel by the body.

It was thought that the venous and arterial systems

were not in communication except through tiny
perforations in the interventricular septum separating
the two halves of the heart, so the circulatory system
did not form a closed loop.
Bloodletting was raised to the state of an art by Galen (for whom it had the
scope of reinstating the lost humors equilibrium).

The practice peaked during the first half of the nineteenth, century, when it
was believed to cure an enormous variety of illnesses. Leeches (Hirudo
medicinalis) were raised in farms and sold in huge numbers (estimated
order of magnitude: one hundred million a year in Europe).

Hirudo medicinalis

Actually bloodletting was considered an

Ancient Greek painting on a vase, effective treatment almost to our days,
showing a physician (iatros)
bleeding a patient until it was demonstrated to be normally
useless or, in most cases, even dangerous.
The humors theory found its way through Islamic medicine.

Avicenna (Ib Sina, 980–1037)

Canon of Medicine

Razi (Muhammad ibn Zakariya Razi, 865–925) Razi was an eclectic

The cover of the famous
Book on Medicine by al-Rāzī
Liber medicinalis Almansoris
scientist very famous in his
times. He explicitly
questioned several of
Galen’s claims on the basis
of his own experimental
observations.
The anatomical studies are resumed in Italy
in 1200, at the University of Bologna,
favored by the professors of Law, to settle
the questions concerning the causes of
death.

Furthermore, the Emperor

Frederick II allowed in
1215 autopsies and in 1300
also Pope Boniface 8th gave
the authorization at
dissections.
Statue of Bonifacio VIII, Arnolfo di Cambio,
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence
Andreas Vesalius (Brussels 1514 – Zante 1564)
Latinized from Andries van Wesel

• Chair of Anatomy Professor in Padua

(not yet 23 years old)

• Author of De Humanis Corpori Fabrica

Libri Septem 1543

• He was for medicine what Galileo Galilei was for physics!

• He died at almost 50 in mysterious circumstances

 > 13 centuries

Galen 131–201 Vesalio 1514 – 1564

Vesalio’s revolutionary work opened a new era in physiology.

He studied Razi’s books. He based his famous massive treatise
De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543) on direct
observation of dissected human bodies.

He pointed out several of Galen’s mistakes, particularly in the

description of circulatory system.
William Harvey (Folkestone, 1578 – Roehampton, 1657)

William Harvey was an English physician who

made fundamental contributions to our
understanding of the physiology of the
cardiovascular system, and who can be rightly
thought of as one of the first biomechanicians.

Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et

sanguinis inanimalibus (1628) by Harvey
is considered to be the first
correct systematic description of blood
circulation (limited to great vessels:
microcirculation was a later discovery)
Harvey was dissatisfied with Galen’s theories, and by a clever
combination of arguments and experimentation proved that blood
must travel in a closed circuit in the cardiovascular system.

His most intriguing argument was based on a simple mass

balance: Harvey reasoned that the volumetric flow of blood was
far too large to be supplied by ingestion of food.

How did he do this? Using a sheep’s heart, he

first estimated the volume of blood pumped
per heart beat (the stroke volume) as two
ounces (almost 60 gr) of blood. Knowing the
heart rate, he then computed that the heart
must be pumping more than 8600 ounces
(almost 250 Kg) of blood per hour, which far
exceeds the mass of food any sheep would be
expected to eat!
“Since all things, both argument and ocular demonstration, show
that the blood passes through the lungs and heart by the force of
the ventricles, and is sent for distribution to all parts of the body,
where it makes its way into the veins and porosities of the flesh,
and then flows by the veins from the circumference on every side to
the center, from the lesser to the greater veins, and is by them
finally discharged into the vena cava and right auricle of the
heart; it is absolutely necessary to conclude that the blood in the
animal body is impelled in a circle, and is in a state of ceaseless
motion”

W. Harvey, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. [An

Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals.] (1628)
Harvey is notable because he was one of the
first physicians to use a combination of
quantification, deductive reasoning, and
experimentation to understand a clinically
important medical topic.

Such approaches are commonplace today but

were revolutionary in Harvey’s time and even
caused him to be strongly criticized by many
prominent physicians
 Thomas Willis (1621–1675)
Willis is remembered for his discovery of
the loop supplying blood to the brain (circle
of Willis).

Andrea Cesalpino, (1519–1603)

Cesalpino proved that the heart is
the only engine responsible for
blood motion, and that the liver
has noting to do with it.
Cesalpino, locates in the heart the vital principle (the soul) “sanguis
fugit ad cor tanquam ad suum principium, not ad hepar autum cerebrum”
Stephen Hales (1677–1761)
He determined the blood volume
in the body, the heart output and
measured the arterial blood
pressure for the first time. He did
this by direct arterial cannulation
of his horse (in his back yard).

Hales also improved Harvey’s estimate of cardiac stroke volume by

pouring wax at controlled pressure into the heart’s main pumping
chamber (the left ventricle) to make a casting.

He also gave a remarkably accurate estimate of the blood velocity

in the aorta (0.5 m/s).
The discovery of blood cells came (gradually) only after the
invention of the microscope, attributed to the Dutch
Zacharias Jannsen, (1590 ?)

Anthony (or Antonie) van

Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723)
With the help
of his
instruments he Illustration of “red corpuscles”
of blood by A. van
studied Red Leeuwenhoek

Blood Cells
 Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694)

Jan Swammerdam (1637 –1680)

Dutch naturalist, who described the
mechanism of breathing

RBC were independently

observed also by Malpighi and
by Swammerdam (1658)
The discovery of chemical components in blood
came after the birth of molecular biology (XX
Century)
Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille (1797–1869)
Poiseuille was a French engineer and
physiologist who was also interested in
blood flow.
He described how he simplified and
improved the measurement of blood
pressure, using the U-tube mercury
manometer.
Poiseuille then became interested in
laminar flow in tubes and carried out
experiments on the flow of water through
artificial glass capillaries with diameters as
small as 30 μm.

His results allowed him to deduce the relationship between flow,

tube dimensions, and pressure drop, which we know today as the
Hagen–Poiseuille law.
The XIX and XX centuries were very rich of discoveries
concerning blood
Discovery of platelets: 1842.

Discovery of White Blood Cells (WBCs) or leukocytes: 1843

Gabriel Andral (1797–1876)

French Hematoligist

William Addison (1802–1881)

British physician
Addison was the first to claim that leukocytes
can cross blood vessels wall to reach infection
spots.
Lionel Beale (1828–1906)
L.S. Beale, The Microscope in Medicine (J. & A.
Churchill, London, 1877)
Illustration of “red and white
corpuscles” in blood by Beale.

Karl Landsteiner (Baden 1868– New York 1943)

Discover of the ABO blood group system

Landsteiner can be considered the father of

blood transfusion - NOBEL PRICE 1930
Alexander Solomon Wiener
(New York 1907 – New York 1976)

Wiener discovered in 1937

the Rhesus Factor, which may
be present (Rh+) or not (Rh)
on the surface of RBCs.
 Blood Components and the Human
Circulatory System
Human blood accounts for 8% of total body weight (about 5.2 lt).

Blood major functions:

(1) The transport of oxygen, nutrients and various substances

through the body.

(2) The regulation of bulk equilibria (removes carbon dioxide toward

lungs and waste products of cell metabolisms toward purification
organs, like kidneys that filter blood),

(3) The body immune defense against foreign bodies

 Blood components
cells

40-45% 1%
Red Blood Cells White Blood Cells Platelets
(many species with
different functions)
plasma

Large and small molecules

with various functions
 Blood is a concentrated and complex heterogeneous
suspension
Red Blood Cells (RBCs or Erythrocytes) – about 45% of blood
volume. This percentage is called HEMATOCRIT
RBCs represent approximately 99% of all
blood cells.

The primary function of erythrocytes is

to aid in the transport of blood gases,
oxygen and carbon dioxide, thank you to
the carrying protein hemoglobin*.

The RBCs number per cubic millimeter

of blood is approximately 5–6 x 106

*
Hemoglobin was discovered in 1840 by Friedrich Ludwig Hünefeld (1799–1882), a
German physician and chemist.
 Plasma, aqueous polymeric and ionic solution
about 55% of the blood volume

Plasma contains 92% water with the rest being

made up of electrolytes, organic molecules,
numerous proteins (among which albumin*
globulins and fibrinogen) and waste products.

Plasma’s central physiological function is

to transport dissolved substances, nutrients,
wastes and the cellular elements
throughout the circulatory system.

*
Albumin was discovered in urine in 1500 by one of the most famous physician and philosopher of that time: Philippus Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), better known as Paracelsus, a name indicating that he was at least as great as the
Roman physician Celsus.
The cardiovascular system consists of two major parts, the systemic
(or large) circulation and the pulmonary (or small) circulation,
connected by the heart.

Heart is the only source of energy

for propelling blood throughout
the vessels network.
Woodcut engraving of the major
veins in a human, from De Humnai
Corporis Fabrica Libri Septum by
Andreas Vesalius, published in
Basel in 1543.
There are a number of inaccuracies
in this image but it does serve to
illustrate the fantastic geometric
complexity of the human vascular
tree. This is reinforced when we
realize that less than 0.0001% of
all the vessels in the body are
depicted in this image.
The vessels that bring the blood in our body form a complex system of
tubes - small and large - all along between 95,000 and 160,000 km.

With the vessels that form our cardio-circulatory system, we could wrap
the Earth three or four times (whose circumference at the equator is
about 40,000 km).
The systemic and pulmonary circuits are formed of three main types of
vessels: arteries, capillaries and veins, subdivided according to their
diameters that range over several orders of magnitude, and the wall
thickness.

Veins are low pressure vessels with a slow flow and their vessel walls
are thin, in contrast to arteries
Blood vessels are divided into different types based on
their structure and function.
The arteries carry blood at high pressure and therefore
the thickness of the wall is greater than in the veins.

Vessels walls deform

under pulsating blood
pressure: Fluid-Structure
Interaction (FSI)
Arterioles are blood vessels, with a very small diameter
(about 0.2 mm) that branches out from the arteries,
preceding the capillaries.

The arterioles have a thin muscular wall (usually consisting

of one or two layers of smooth muscle) and constitute the
main site of vascular resistance.
Arterioles then branch out into the capillary networks.

A capillary is a small blood vessel from 5 to 10 µm in diameter, and

having a wall one endothelial cell thick.

They are the smallest blood vessels in the body. They convey blood
between the arterioles and venules.

These microvessels are the site of exchange of many substances with

the interstitial fluid surrounding them.
Venules (about 100-200 μm in diameter) collect blood from the
capillaries in a convergent flow pattern. Venule smooth muscle is
innervated by sympathetic nerves.

Venules have thin muscular walls, which allow to increase their lumen
or reduce it.

Along with the veins, venules serve as capacitance (volume storage)

vessels, containing two thirds of the circulating blood volume. They
contain 60% of the body’s blood volume.

Veins and venules have

compliant valves that prevent
back flow and ensure that
blood flows in one direction.
 Hemorheology
A great impulse to advances in hemorheology comes from the
evidence that many cardiovascular diseases have their primary cause
in defective blood flow.
Conversely, hemorheological aberrations can be considered as a
result (or an indicator) of insufficient circulatory function.

The mathematical and numerical study of constitutive models that

can capture the rheological response of blood over a range of flow
conditions is ultimately recognised as an important tool for clinical
diagnosis and therapeutic planning.
 Basic of Rheology
Rheology from Greek ῥέω rhéō, "flow" and -λoγία, -logia,
"study of"
The term rheology was coined by Eugene C. Bingham, in 1920.
The term was inspired by the aphorism of Simplicius (often
attributed to Heraclitus), panta rhei, "everything flows“.

E.C. Bingham (1878 - 1945)

 Newtonian Fluids

Newtonian fluids are named after

Newton who described the flow
behavior of fluids with a simple linear
relation between shear stress [mPa]
and shear rate [1/s].

This relationship is now known as

Newton's Law of Viscosity, where the
proportionality constant η is
Sir Issac Newton (1642 - 1726)
the viscosity [Pa s] of the fluid

Water, air, alcohol are all examples of Newtonian fluids

over the range of shear stresses and shear rates
encountered in everyday life.
 t= shear force
unit surface
= Shear stress

U(y) velocity
profile Shear
rate

Newton’s law
Shear viscosity Shear
of viscosity
stress rate

VISCOSITY m= shear stress

shear rate =
t
Blood plasma, which consists mostly of water, is essentially a
Newtonian fluid.

Though the whole blood has complex mechanical properties, which

become particularly significant when the particles size is comparable
with the lumen size, in large vessels blood has a Newtonian bheavior.

Cauchy stress extra-stress (or

tensor
Lagrange multiplier arising form
the incompressibility constraing
deviatoric stress)
tensor, representing
the forces which the
material develops in
response to being
deformed
 deformation (or strain rate) tensor

viscosity
density

conservation of momentum

conservation of mass
 Incompressible
Navier-Stokes
equations

The symbol ~ is attached to

dimensional variables (R refernce
length, U reference velocity)

Reynolds Number
The blood complex mechanical properties become particularly
significant when the lumen size is “small” (arterioles, venules). In
this case, blood cannot be modeled as a Navier-Stokes fluid.

Assuming that all macroscopic length and time scales are

sufficiently large compared to length and time scales at the level of
the individual RBC, then the continuum hypothesis holds and
whole blood can be approximated as a homogeneous non-
Newtonian fluid.

At the microcirculation level,

blood cannot be modeled has a
homogeneous fluid and it is
essential to consider it as a
suspension of blood cells
(specially RBCs) in plasma.
 Generalised Newtonian fluids

Generalised Newtonian fluids satisfy the following

rheological equation

the viscosity depends on the shear rate

VISCOSITY m= shear stress

shear rate =
 Power-law model ( also Ostwald-de Waele model)
k consistency index

n flow index.

It is the simplest model allowing the shear thinning

phenomenon if
n<1
A disadvantage of this model is the problem of correct prediction of
viscosity at low and high shear rates.

For n=1 we obtain the Newtonian fluid

 BEHAVIOUR OFm(g)
m SHEAR THINNING or
PSEUDOPLASTIC

NEWTONIAN

SHEAR THICKENING or
DILATANT

g shear rate
shear stress
t
SHEAR THINNING or
PSEUDOPLASTIC

NEWTONIAN

SHEAR THICKENING or
DILATANT

shear rate
g
VELOCITY PROFILES IN A TUBE
Problem: the power low model does not predict the correct
viscosity at low and high shear rates

SHEAR THINNING

SHEAR THICKENING

SHEAR THINNING

SHEAR THICKENING
What is a problem in our case can
be an advantage in other contexts:

Ice rheology: Glen’s law

Glen’s law is the most

commonly used flow law for
ice in glaciers and ice sheets.
S. Chien, S. Usami, R.J.
Dellenback, M.I. Gregersen,
Science 168, 977–979 (1970)
 Pa s Pa s Hematocrit=45%

In addition, the viscosity of whole blood is strongly dependent

on temperature and on hematocrit.
S.E. Charm, G.S. Kurland, Blood Flow and Microcirculation (Wiley, New York, 1974)
Carreau-Yasuda Model
 Yield Stress Models
Blood has been suggested to possess yield stress. However,
reported values for the yield stress of blood have a great
variation ranging from 0.002 to 0.40 dynes/cm2.

This variation has been attributed to artifacts arising from

interactions between the RBCs and surfaces of the rheometer as
well as to the experimental methods used to measure the yield
stress and the length of time over which the experiments are
run.

Rather than treating the yield stress as a constant, it should be

considered as a function of time and linked to thixotropy.
L. Dintenfass, Blood Microrheology - Viscosity Factors in Blood Flow. Ischaemia and Thrombosis (Butterworth,
Oxford, 1971)

P.C.F. Moller, J. Mewis, D. Bonn, Yield stress and thixotropy: on the difficulty of measuring yield stress in practice.
Soft Matter 2, 274–288 (2006)
 The Bingham model

t0

g
We have an additional term responsible for the yield stress t0 in
comparison with the Newtonian model. If |t|< t0 the Bingham
fluid behaves as a solid, otherwise it behaves as a fluid.

Except for the yield stress modelling ability it is not the best model
for a blood flow description. This is simply because it cannot
mimic the shear thinning. If t0 =0, we have the Newtonian fluid
Herschel-Bulkley model
YIELD STRESS

The model does not predict blood behavior at

high and low shear stresses
 t
Shear THINNING

Bingham
YIELD STRESS

Shear THICKENING

t0

shear rate
HERSHEL-BULKLEY CHANNEL FLOW

BINGHAM
Shear NUMBER
thickening Shear
thinning

Newtonian
 Casson model
Casson constitutive model is the most common yield stress
model for blood

The existence of a yield stress for blood and its use as a material
parameter is still nowadays a controversial issue, due to the sensitivity
of yield stress measurements to hardly controllable factors.
 The experimental velocity profiles were measured by means of
Doppler velocimetry inside a straight plexiglass tube, 63 mm in
diameter and 1.8 m long. The fluid was composed of porcine
blood and 10% sodium citrate.
Yeleswarapu K K, Kameneva M V, Rajagopal K R and Antaki J F, Mech. Res. Comm. 25 (1998)
Exercises Session
 Exercise 1 (Hagen–Poiseuille flow)
Consider an incompressible Newtonian fluid whose viscosity is m
and work in cylindrical coordinates with a pipe of radius R and
length L, aligned along the x-axis. The no-slip boundary condition
is v = 0 when r = R. Assume that the inlet pressure is Pin and the
outlet pressure is Pout .
(a). Determine the pressure field
(b). Determine the velocity profile
(c). Compute the discharge

(d). Determine the wall shear stress

(e). Show that the ratio of mean shear to the wall shear rate is 2/3.
 Exercise 2 (Energy dissipation)

The rate of viscous dissipation for the whole pipe is obtained from
the velocity gradient and the shear rate by

Considering the same conditions of Exercise 1, compute x and

compare to Q
 Exercise 3 (power law flow)
Consider an incompressible power law fluid flowing in a
cylindrical tube of radius R and length L. Assume steady conditions
and no-slip on r = R.
(a). Determine the pressure field knowing that Pin is the inlet
pressure and that Pout is the outlet one.
(b). Determine the velocity profile
(c). Compute the discharge

(d). Determine the wall shear stress and compare with the
Newtonian case
(e). Compute the rate of dissipation
 Exercise 4
Defining the apparent viscosity

where DP= Pin - Pout is the given inlet-outlet pressure difference and
Q the steady discharge in the tube of radius R and length L,
compute mapp for:
(a). A Newtonian flow
(b). A power law flow
 Exercise 5 (Steady Bingham flow)
Consider an incompressible steady Bingham flow

in a cylindrical tube of radius R and length L.

(a). Determine the radius of the inner unyleded core knowing the
inlet-outlet pressure difference.
(b). Which is the minimum pressure difference preventing that the
flow does not come to a stop?
(c). Determine the velocity profile
(d). Determine the discharge Q
(e). Compute the rate of dissipation
 Exercise 6 (Unsteady Bingham flow)
Consider an incompressible laminar Bingham flow in a channel
whose length is L and whose width is 2H. Assume that the flow is
driven by a prescribed pressure difference evolving in time, DP =f(t).
Write the evolution equation for the inner core thickness.
 Exercise 7 (Hydraulic resistance)
The hydraulic resistance of a vessel is defined as

where DP= Pin - Pout is the inlet-outlet pressure difference and Q

the discharge. Considering a cylindrical vessel of radius R and
length L, compute the hydraulic resistance for:
(a). A Newtonian flow
(b). A power law flow
(c). A Bingham flow
 Exercise 8
Consider an incompressible non-Newtonian fluid

flowing in a cylindrical tube of radius R and length L. Assume

steady conditions, no-slip on r = R, and that the flow is driven by a
prescribed pressure difference DP.
Design a numerical code to compute the velocity profile and the
discharge.