Document Type : Full Research Paper
Authors
1 Ph.D. Candidate, Biological Fluid Mechanics & Computational Fluid Dynamics Research Laboratory, Department of Biomechanics, Biomedical Engineering School, Amirkabir U Diversity of Technology
2 Associated Professor, Biomedical Engineering School, Amirkabir University of Technology
Abstract
Arterial embolism is one of the major killers of the people who have heart diseases. In cerebral arteries, the danger of embolism is that the ruptured particles are carried into the brain, provoking neurological symptoms or a stroke. In this research, for the first time, we have presented a numerical model to study the complete blockage of the human common carotid artery resulted from the physical motion of a blood clot bulk with spherical geometry in it. In the numerical model, a transient flow was assumed in an axisymmetric finite length tube. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations were used as the governing equations for the fluid and a linear elastic model was utilized for the blood clot bulk. In order to model the contact conditions between the blood clot and arterial wall, an axisymmetric rigid contact model was used. The arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation (ALE) was applied to analyze the solid large displacements inside fluid flow. The results indicated that during contact between stenosis and the clot, separation and reattachment regions were occurred on the stenosis extensively which are susceptible to thrombosis onset and growth. By abruption of the clot from the arterial wall during its passage through the stenosis, an extensive recirculation zone occurred downstream of the stenosis and beneath the moving clot bulk. Analysis of the clot motion and deformation have showed that when the clot passed the stenosis completely, the areas near the clot peak had a large tendency to expand which indicated the propensity of these areas to disperse.
Keywords
- Biofluid
- Biomechanics
- Hemodynamics
- Stenosis
- Contact analysis
- finite element method
- structure interactions
Main Subjects