We are interested in simulating blood flow in arteries with a one dimensional
model. Thanks to recent developments in the analysis of hyperbolic system of
conservation laws (in the Saint-Venant/ shallow water equations context) we
will perform a simple finite volume scheme. We focus on conservation properties
of this scheme which were not previously considered. To emphasize the necessity
of this scheme, we present how a too simple numerical scheme may induce
spurious flows when the basic static shape of the radius changes. On contrary,
the proposed scheme is "well-balanced": it preserves equilibria of Q = 0. Then
examples of analytical or linearized solutions with and without viscous damping
are presented to validate the calculations. The influence of abrupt change of
basic radius is emphasized in the case of an aneurism.Comment: 36 page
