Abstract
This article described the numerical investigation of shear-thinning blood flow characteristics when subjected to longitudinal and transverse vibrations and delineated the underlying mechanisms of the flow rate enhancements, respectively. In order to fully consider the mechanical vibrations of the capillary, a moving wall boundary condition was adopted. The present numerical results showed that the longitudinal vibration caused a significant increase of wall shear rates, which resulted in a decrease of viscosity and the subsequent increase of flow rates. However, the shear rate for the transverse vibration was slightly increased and the calculated flow rate was underestimated comparing with the previous experimental results.