FRACTIONAL-ORDER MODELS FOR SIMULATING BLOOD FLOW IN ARTERIES WITH VISCOELASTIC WALLS

Understanding blood flow in arteries requires accurate representation of both the hemodynamics (the fluid) and the mechanical response of the arterial wall. Arterial walls
exhibit time-dependent, history-dependent mechanical behavior (viscoelasticity) arising from collagen, elastin, smooth muscle, and microstructural remodeling. Classical integer-order viscoelastic models (Maxwell, Kelvin–Voigt, standard linear solid) capture some aspects of this response but often fail to reproduce the broad-band power-law stress–relaxation and creep observed experimentally in biological tissues. Fractional calculus provides compact constitutive laws with nonlocal-in-time operators that naturally describe such power-law memory, making fractional-order viscoelastic models particularly attractive for realistic arterial
wall modeling.