Two-Phase Biofluid Flow Model for Magnetic Drug Targeting

Abstract

Magnetic drug targeting (MDT) is a noninvasive method for the medical treatment of various diseases of the cardiovascular system. Biocompatible magnetic nanoparticles loaded with medicinal drugs are carried to a tissue target in the human body (in vivo) under the applied magnetic field. The present study examines the MDT technique in various microchannels geometries by adopting the principles of biofluid dynamics (BFD). The blood flow is considered as laminar, pulsatile and the blood as an incompressible and non-Newtonian fluid. A two-phase model is adopted to resolve the blood flow and the motion of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs). The numerical results are obtained by utilizing a meshless point collocation method (MPCM) alongside with the moving least squares (MLS) approximation. The numerical results are verified by comparing with published numerical results. We investigate the effect of crucial parameters of MDT, including (1) the volume fraction of nanoparticles, (2) the location of the magnetic field, (3) the strength of the magnetic field and its gradient, (4) the way that MNPs approach the targeted area, and (5) the bifurcation angle of the vessel.

Keywords

• drug delivery
• biofluid dynamics
• magnetic nanoparticles
• two-phase flow
• meshless
• stream function-vorticity