A numerical approach for predicting hemodynamic characteristics of 3D aorta geometry under pulsatile turbulent blood flow conditions using fluid-structure interaction

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death all around the world and harm the society in terms of economically, socially, and psychologically. Hence diagnosing cardiovascular diseases as early as possible has become vital circumstance. Since clinicians need reliable and fast numerical approaches for their urgent pre-surgery decisions, individualised risk prediction and virtual treatment planning, CFD has become widespread in biomedical especially in cardiovascular medicine. The main aim of current study is to provide insight to hemodynamic characteristics of 3-D aorta geometry with pulsatile turbulent blood flow. In line with this purpose, blood and vessel mechanism has been evaluated through numerical fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis that couples computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis (FEA). Besides, effects of turbulence modelling, viscous effects and solid domain parameters such as artery thickness, elastic modulus and Poisson’s ratio on hemodynamic characteristics have been investigated. The investigations are carried out by using twelve turbulence models, two Non- Newtonian models and different solid domain values to compare output parameters such as oscillatory shear index, velocity field characteristics, von-Mises stress and displacement. Results have shown that SST k-omega with low-Re corrections model seem to be better capable of predicting hemodynamic characteristics. Proposed computational model can be considered as an initial work for the digital twin of cardiovascular system which is described as the realistic virtual model.