  My dissertation is about the formulation and application of anisotropic
hydrodynamics as a successful non-equilibrium hydrodynamics model for studying
the QGP. For this purpose, I introduce the basic conformal anisotropic
hydrodynamics formalism and then explain the ways we included realistic
features (bulk degree of freedom, quasiparticle implementation of realistic
equation of state, more realistic collisional kernel), to make it a suitable
hydrodynamics model for studying the QGP generated in heavy-ion collisions. For
verification of our model we have compared the evolution of model parameters
predicted by aHydro and vHydro, with exact solution of the Boltzmann equation.
However, the system is not conformal and the aHydro needed to be improved to
include a realistic prescription for the equation of state which takes care of
non-ideal effect in the dynamics. I have then designed a novel method for
implementing the realistic equation of state (provided by lattice QCD) in the
aHydro formalism. This model, called the quasiparticle aHydro model, integrates
the non-conformal effects in the aHydro model. The non-conformal effects are
due to strong interactions of plasma constituents which leads to
temperature-dependence of the particles' effective mass in the system. Based on
the quasiparticle picture, we have developed the quasiparticle aHydro
(aHydroQP) model. We have then compared the phenomenological predictions of the
aHydroQP model with experimental observations. Comparisons illustrate a high
level of consistency between our model and the experimental data. Finally, I
have calculated the quark self-energy in an anisotropic QGP. The quark
self-energy is important because it encodes the way quarks gain interactional
mass while in the hot QGP. I also have presented the calculation of gluon
self-energy in hard loop approximation in an anisotropic QGP.
