Z. angew. Math. Phys. 60 (2009) 299–323 0044-2275/09/020299-25 DOI 10.1007/s00033-008-7094-2 c  2008 Birkh¨auser Verlag, Basel Zeitschrift f¨ ur angewandte Mathematik und Physik ZAMP Mass transfer to blood flowing through arterial stenosis Sarifuddin, Santabrata Chakravarty, Prashanta Kumar Mandal and Helge I. Andersson Abstract. The present investigation deals with a mathematical model representing the mass transfer to blood streaming through the arteries under stenotic condition. The mass transport refers to the movement of atherogenic molecules, that is, blood-borne components, such as oxygen and low-density lipoproteins from flowing blood into the arterial walls or vice versa. The blood flowing through the artery is treated to be Newtonian and the arterial wall is considered to be rigid having differently shaped stenoses in its lumen arising from various types of abnormal growth or plaque formation. The nonlinear unsteady pulsatile flow phenomenon unaffected by concentration-field of the macromolecules is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations together with the equation of continuity while that of mass transfer is controlled by the convection-diffusion equation. The governing equations of motion accompanied by appropriate choice of the boundary conditions are solved numerically by MAC(Marker and Cell) method and checked numerical stability with desired degree of accuracy. The quantitative analysis carried out finally includes the respective profiles of the flow-field and concentration along with their distributions over the entire arterial segment as well. The key factors like the wall shear stress and Sherwood number are also examined for further qualitative insight into the flow and mass transport phenomena through arterial stenosis. The present results show quite consistency with several existing results in the literature which substantiate sufficiently to validate the applicability of the model under consideration. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000). 80A20, 74S20, 76Z05. Keywords. Mass transfer, irregular stenosis, Sherwood number, MAC method, wall shear stress. 1. Introduction It is well established fact that atherosclerosis is a kind of arterial diseases leading to the malfunction of the cardiovascular system involving a distinctive accumu- lation of low-density lypoprotein and other lipid bearing materials in large and medium-size arteries [1]. Such abnormal accumulation implies that the transport of low-density lipoproteins from blood into the arterial walls must play key role in the development of atherosclerotic lesions, which are usually detected at specific locations in the arterial system, particularly near the bends, bifurcations and some