Pulsatile Blood Flow in Arterial Bifurcation Simulation, ANSYS Fluent Training

Description

This project simulates unsteady pulsatile blood flow in an artery bifurcation simplified model by ANSYS Fluent software.

The fluid domain geometry is designed in the Design Modeler, and the computational grid is generated using Ansys Meshing. The mesh type is unstructured, and the element number is 168367.

The inlet’s blood mass flow rate and outlet are equal to 0.001570178 and 0.00078576 kg/s, respectively. The blood pressure in the inlet is equal to 250 Pa, approximately 1.87515 mmHg. It is worth mentioning that blood pressure in large arteries in the human body varies between 120 and 80 mmHg.

Pulsatile Blood Flow Methodology

The pulsatile nature of blood flow is simulated using a User-Defined Function (UDF), which changes the inlet velocity according to flow time as a sinus function.

Pulsatile Blood Flow Conclusion

The simulation solver in this project is unsteady, and the results shown here are in the flow time equal to 0.162s, representing the peak value for the velocity function. One of the most exciting results of this project is the determination of prone regions of artery wall rupture.

As seen from the pressure contour at a flow time equal to 0.16s, the blood pressure on the bifurcation tip, where two flow streams diverge from each other, reaches high values ​​equal to 125Pa, which is half the pressure of the fluid at the inlet.

Another interesting conclusion to make from the results is the regions that are most likely to form stenosis. In literature, areas with low Wall Shear Stress (WSS) are most likely to form stenosis. As shown in the figure illustrating the WSS values, the most likely region for stenosis formation is the tip of bifurcation.