Pulsatile blood flow-split in aortic arch dissection

Abnormalities of the aortic arch, as the most proximal site of the cardiovascular system, are of great interest due to its major role in blood distribution to all downstream members. Wall dissection is one of the disorders that an aorta may suffer due to hypertension or degradation of aortic wall properties. A geometrical change of the aortic arch caused by the dissected wall, and consequently the blood flow path, makes the time-varying flow curves to be different in comparison to the healthy aortic arch. This phenomenon modifies wall shear stress (WSS) history during the cardiac cycle. In the current work, the pulsatile blood flow in a typical Stanford A (DeBakey II) dissected aorta is simulated by CFD technique, STAR-CCM+. The boundary conditions are calculated based on a combination of the impedance boundary condition and the auto-regulation concept in the cardiovascular system.

Let's Gain More Confidence Of Clinicians With Our Colorful Contours: Blood Flow Simulation In Arteries Using Abaqus & STAR-CCM+

The objective of the current work is to present the results of several numerical simulations of pulsatile blood flow in healthy and diseased arteries and compare with clinical expectations. Different realistic and physiological aspects such as blood flow interaction with arterial walls, effect of heart movement, cardiovascular autoregulation, arterial walls' hyperelasticity and cardiovascular disorders have been incorporated in the models thanks to a direct coupling of Abaqus and STAR-CCM+. Comparisons of implicit and explicit coupling methods in cardiovascular simulations have been discussed. An in-house methodology combined with explicit FSI coupling has reduced considerably calculation time while the simulations stay realistic and reliable for clinicians

Pulsatile blood flow interaction with arterial walls of aorta : autoregulation and impedance pressure boundary condition and its biomedical applications

Para las decisiones urgentes sobre intervenciones quirúrgicas en el sistema cardiovascular se necesitan simulaciones computacionales con resultados fiables y que consuman un tiempo de cálculo razonable. Durante años los investigadores han trabajado en diversos métodos numéricos de cálculo que resulten atractivos para los cirujanos. Estos métodos, precisos pero costosos desde el punto de vista del coste computacional, crean un desajuste entre la oferta de los ingenieros que realizan las simulaciones y los médicos que operan en el quirófano. Por otra parte, los métodos de cálculo más simplificados reducen el tiempo de cálculo pero pueden proporcionar resultados no realistas. El objetivo de esta tesis es combinar los conceptos de autorregulación e impedancia del sistema circulatorio, la interacción flujo sanguíneo-pared arterial y modelos geométricos idealizados tridimensionales de las arterias pero sin pérdida de realismo, con objeto de proponer una metodología de simulación que proporcione resultados correctos y completos, con tiempos de cálculo moderados. En las simulaciones numéricas, las condiciones de contorno basadas en historias de presión presentan inconvenientes por ser difícil conocerlas con detalle, y porque los resultados son muy sensibles ante pequeñas variaciones de dichas historias. La metodología propuesta se basa en los conceptos de autorregulación, para imponer la demanda de flujo aguas abajo del modelo en el ciclo cardiaco, y la impedancia, para representar el efecto que ejerce el flujo en el resto del sistema circulatorio sobre las arterias modeladas. De este modo las historias de presión en el contorno son resultados del cálculo, que se obtienen de manera iterativa. El método propuesto se aplica en una geometría idealizada del arco aórtico sin patologías y en otra geometría correspondiente a una disección Stanford de tipo A, considerando la interacción del flujo pulsátil con las paredes arteriales. El efecto de los tejidos circundantes también se incorpora en los modelos. También se hacen aplicaciones considerando la interacción en una geometría especifica de un paciente anciano que proviene de una tomografía computarizada. Finalmente se analiza una disección Stanford tipo B con tres modelos que incluyen la fenestración del saco. Clinicians demand fast and reliable numerical results of cardiovascular biomechanic simulations for their urgent pre-surgery decissions. Researchers during many years have work on different numerical methods in order to attract the clinicians' confidence to their colorful contours. Though precise but expensive and time-consuming methodologies create a gap between numerical biomechanics and hospital personnel. On the other hand, simulation simplifications with the aim of reduction in computational time may cause in production of unrealistic outcomes. The main objective of the current investigation is to combine ideas such as autoregulation, impedance, fluid-solid interaction and idealized geometries in order to propose a computationally cheap methodology without excessive or unrealistic simplifications. The pressure boundary conditions are critical and polemic in numerical simulations of cardiovascular system, in which a specific arterial site is of interest and the rest of the netwrok is neglected but represented by a boundary condition. The proposed methodology is a pressure boundary condition which takes advantage of numerical simplicity of application of an imposed pressure boundary condition on outlets, while it includes more sophisticated concepts such as autoregulation and impedance to gain more realistic results. Incorporation of autoregulation and impedance converts the pressure boundary conditions to an active and dynamic boundary conditions, receiving feedback from the results during the numerical calculations and comparing them with the physiological requirements. On the other hand, the impedance boundary condition defines the shapes of the pressure history curves applied at outlets. The applications of the proposed method are seen on idealized geometry of the healthy arotic arch as well as idealized Stanford type A dissection, considering the interaction of the arterial walls with the pulsatile blood flow. The effect of surrounding tissues is incorporated and studied in the models. The simulations continue with FSI analysis of a patient-specific CT scanned geometry of an old individual. Finally, inspiring of the statistic results of mortality rates in Stanford type B dissection, three models of fenestrated dissection sac is studied and discussed. Applying the developed boundary condition, an alternative hypothesis is proposed by the author with respect to the decrease in mortality rates in patients with fenestrations.

Low-dimensional modeling of streaks in a wedge flow boundary layer

This paper is concerned with the low dimensional structure of optimal streaks in a wedge flow boundary layer, which have been recently shown to consist of a unique (up to a constant factor) three-dimensional streamwise evolving mode, known as the most unstable streaky mode. Optimal streaks exhibit a still unexplored/unexploited approximate self-similarity (not associated with the boundary layer self-similarity), namely the streamwise velocity re-scaled with their maximum remains almost independent of both the spanwise wavenumber and the streamwise coordinate; the remaining two velocity components instead do not satisfy this property. The approximate self-similar behavior is analyzed here and exploited to further simplify the description of optimal streaks. In particular, it is shown that streaks can be approximately described in terms of the streamwise evolution of the scalar amplitudes of just three one-dimensional modes, providing the wall normal profiles of the streamwise velocity and two combinations of the cross flow velocity components; the scalar amplitudes obey a singular system of three ordinary differential equations (involving only two degrees of freedom), which approximates well the streamwise evolution of the general streaks.

Pulsatile flow in coronary bifurcations for different stenting techniques

The objective of this work is to analyze the local hem odynamic changes caused in a coronary bifurcation by three different stenting techniques: simple stenting of the main vessel, simple stenting of the main vessel with kissing balloon in the side branch and culotte. To carry out this study an idealized geometry of a coronary bifurcation is used, and two bifurcation angles, 45º and 90º, are chosen as representative of the wide variety of re al configurations. In order to quantify the influence of the stenting technique on the local blood flow, both numeri- cal simulations and experimental measurements are performed. First, steady simulations are carried out with the commercial code ANSYS-Fluent, and then, experimental measurements with PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) obtained in the laboratory are used to validate the numerical simulation. The steady computational simulations show a good overall agreement with the experimental data. Second, pulsatile flow is considered to take into account the tran- sient effects. The time averaged wall shear stress, scillatory shear index and pressure drop obtained numerically are used to compare the behavior of the stenting techniques.