Identifiability of a reduced model of pulsatile flow in an arterial compartment

In this article we propose a reduced model of the input-output behaviour of an arterial compartment, including the short systolic phase where wave phenomena are predominant. The objective is to provide basis for model-based signal processing methods for the estimation from non-invasive measurements and the interpretation of the characteristics of these waves. Standard space discretizations of distributed models of the flow lead to high order models for the pressure wave transfer function, and low order rational transfer functions approximations give poor results. The main idea developed here to circumvent these problems is to explicitly use a propagation delay in the reduced model. Due to phenomena such that peaking and steepening, the considered pressure pulse waves behave more like solitons generated by a Korteweg de Vries (KdV) equation than like linear waves. So we start with a quasi-1D Navier-Stokes equation that takes into account a radial acceleration of the wall, in order to be able to recover, during the reduction process, the dispersive term of KdV equation which, combined with the nonlinear transport term gives rise to solitons. The radial and axial acceleration terms being supposed small, a multiscale singular perturbation technique is used to separate the fast wave propagation phenomena taking place in a boundary layer in time and space described by a KdV equation from the slow phenomena represented by a parabolic equation leading to two-elements windkessel models.