Questions to be addressed during the project

  "Pulse wave propagation in the arteries"
  ----------------------------------------

- Brief description of blood and its fluid-mechanical properties 
  (what is it made of; what constitutive models are appropriate to 
  describe its behaviour in various parts of the circulation, etc.).
  
  [McDonald chapter 2 * ]

- Typical velocity profiles encountered in different parts of the
  circulation. 

  [McDonald chapter 2 * ]

- Brief description of the properties of the arterial walls.
  What mechanical models are appropriate?  How do the walls' properties
  change with age? 

  [McDonald chapter 4 ]

- Wave propagation in the arteries: Expansion of the arterial wall
  and wave velocity. 

  [McDonald chapter 4 ]

- Pulsatile pressure flow relation. Womersley flow. Viscous and
  inviscid approximations. 

  [McDonald chapter 5 *]

- Wave reflections; origin and main sites of reflection in the
  arterial system

  [McDonald chapter 9]

- Analysis of arterial waveforms -- Fourier decomposition; number 
  of relevant harmonics

  [McDonald chapter 10 *]

- Impedance: The concept of impedance; what does it describe;
  how do we compute it. What does it tell us (allegedly...)

  [McDonald chapter 11]


You should also consult my lecture notes which concentrate 
on the mathematical essentials. References to McDonald that are
marked with a "*" indicte that this is a chapter that contains a lot of 
material that is directly relevant to this project. Other chapters 
contain quite a bit of additional material that I either regard as 
peripheral or not terribly well explained. It's up to you to decide 
to what level of detail you wish to pursue individual topics. If you 
struggle with explanations, check out the references that are 
provided at the end of each chapter and see if they provide a better 
explanation. This is what you'd (have to) do in "Real Life"!

  Keep in mind that the final product of this project should be a
report (which will be examined in a short viva) in which you describe 
what you've learned about the mathematical modelling of pulse wave 
propagation in the arterial system. You cannot (and therefore are not 
expected to) know everything that's known about the subject! Make 
sure that you have enough material to write a coherent report. 
There's no point in trying to be overly ambitious by covering lots 
and lots of topics that you neither fully understand nor have time/space 
to discuss in sufficient detail. Try to identify the essential 
issues and concentrate on them! 

  Finally: This book is also good and covers most of the material
from a physical/mathematical point of view:


      Zamir, M. (Mair). The Physics of Pulsatile Flow. AIP Press, 2000. 


The library has a copy here:

https://www.librarysearch.manchester.ac.uk/discovery/fulldisplay?vid=44MAN_INST:MU_NUI&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&tab=Everything&docid=alma9915759924401631&lang=en&context=L&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&query=any,contains,The%20Physics%20of%20Pulsatile%20Flow&sortby=rank&pcAvailability=false&virtualBrowse=true