Haemodynamic study of Flow in concentric and eccentric stenosed carotid Artery

Abstract

Study of flow through arteries is gaining importance in the recent times due to onset of several cardio-vascular diseases like atherosclerosis (block in artery), aneurysms (bulging of artery), hypertension etc. The application of CFD will be useful in demonstrating the underlying mechanism of flow past the diseased arteries. In the present study, initially an approximate eccentric and concentric 50% stenosed carotid model is generated in ANSYS 12.0 based on patient data obtained from ultrasound Doppler scan. Later the percentage of stenosis is increased to 60%, 70%, 80% and 90% in both the cases. A transient analysis has been performed for several pulse cycles in ANSYS FLOTRAN for various percentage cases. The results obtained from ECN and CCN cases are compared to observe the changes in flow behavior in the downstream of stenosis as compared with normal case. The formation of vortices and flow separation zone in downstream in eccentric case is higher than in concentric case. Comparison of results concludes that, with the increase in severity of stenosis, the flow changes abruptly causing an increase in velocity and WSS at throat region. The simulation results obtained agree well with clinically observed data and available literature.

Keywords

• CFD
• Stenotic flow
• Common Carotid Artery
• ANSYS APDL