3D Computer Simulations of Pulsatile Human Blood Flows in Vessels and in the Aortic Arch: Investigation of Non-Newtonian Characteristics of Human Blood

Abstract

Methods of Computational Fluid Dynamics are applied to simulate pulsatile blood flow in human vessels and in the aortic arch. The non-Newtonian behaviour of the human blood is investigated in simple vessels of actual size. Turbulence effects are taken into account. A detailed time-dependent mathematical convergence test has been carried out. The realistic pulsatile flow is used in all simulations. Results of computer simulations of the blood flow in vessels of two different geometries are presented. For pressure, strain rate and velocity component distributions we found significant disagreements between our results obtained with realistic non-Newtonian treatment of human blood and widely used method in literature: a simple Newtonian approximation. A significant increase of the strain rate and, as a result, wall sear stress distribution, is found in the region of the aortic arch. We consider this result astheoretical evidence that supports existing clinical observations and those models not using non-Newtonian treatment underestimate the risk of disruption to the human vascular system.