Development of a Blood Flow Model and Validation Against Experiments and Analytical Models

Abstract

In cardiovascular research, FSI is expressed by the interaction of the blood with the vessel or the heart. FSI plays a crucial role when the deformation of the boundary, in this case the vessel wall, cannot be neglected. Arterial blood flow and wave propagation in liquid filled vessels has been investigated by many researchers. Their work comprises computational, theoretical and experimental investigations and will be outlined below. This paper presents the development and validation of an arterial blood flow model. The model has been developed using finite elements and the fluid and the solid are coupled using the ALE method. This method allows moving boundaries without the need for the mesh movement to follow the material. In this paper both straight and tapered aortic analogues are included in the investigation. The pressure, pressure gradient, fluid flow and wall distension obtained from the finite element model is compared with an unique experimental data set and analytical theory. There is a good agreement between the computational, analytical and experimental results.

Verification of the coupled‐momentum method with Womersley's Deformable Wall analytical solution

“…There are several studies that have used analytical solutions for pulsatile flow in compliant vessels for validation and verification of 3D computational FSI models [22][23][24][25][26] . A FSI strategy involving external coupling of ANSYS and CFX solvers for blood flow in a straight elastic tube was compared against a single-frequency Womersley's analytical solution 22 .…”

“…Ponzini and colleagues 24 presented an in vivo validation using 2D Phase Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging of a Womersley numberbased formula for estimating flow rate in several arteries. In the study of van Geel et al 25 , an ALE FSI numerical model with viscoelastic walls was compared against Womersley's solution and experimental results, showing good agreement for straight and tapered vessels.…”

Development of a Blood Flow Model Including Hypergravity and Validation Against an Analytical Model

“…The modeling package Comsol [22] can be used to model the behavior of blood flow through a blood vessel [20]. This modeling package is based on finite elements.…”

“…This process is repeated for the single time step until the system converges. When convergence is reached the process proceeds with the next time step [19,20].…”