An Extended Thermodynamics Model for Blood Flow

A model for blood flow is introduced in the context of the Rational Extended Thermodynamics (RET). The balance equations are applied to the two-hierarchy structure recently introduced by Ruggeri and Sugiyama. The constitutive relations are derived with universal physical principles and the remaining constitutive functions are evaluated by use of the kinetic theory. The model herein obtained is a hyperbolic generalization of a classical blood flow model. Our equations by construction have the same physical proprieties of the classical system; in addition, owing to its hyperbolic structure, our model avoids the unphysical feature of instantaneous diffusive effects which is typical of parabolic systems. Furthermore we expect that our model, as all RET systems, can describe the physical phenomena better than the classical ones when the fields change rapidly or one has steep gradients.