clotFoam: An open-source framework to simulate blood clot formation under arterial flow

Abstract

Blood clotting involves the coupled processes of platelet aggregation and coagulation. Simulating clotting under flow in complex geometries is challenging due to multiple temporal and spatial scales and high computational cost. clotFoam is an open-source software developed in OpenFOAM that employs a continuum model of platelet advection, diffusion, and aggregation in a dynamic fluid environment and a simplified coagulation model with proteins that advect, diffuse, and react within the fluid and with wall-bound species through reactive boundary conditions. Our framework provides the foundation on which one can build more complex models and perform reliable simulations in almost any computational domain.

Keywords

• Blood clotting
• Platelet aggregation
• Coagulation
• Hemostasis
• Multiscale modeling
• OpenFOAM