Application of Volume‐of‐Fluid Method to Analyze the Viscosity Effect on the Spine Formation of Bloodstains

Abstract

In bloodstain pattern analysis, the blood droplet volume and surface impact velocity play an important role, and many related experimental studies have been carried out. If an appropriate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that could solve bloodstain patterns, especially spine formation bloodstain patterns, can be obtained, the blood droplet volume and impact speeds at various crime scenes can be predicted more accurately. For this purpose, Flow-3D software using the volume-of-fluid method was applied to analyze the behavior of human blood droplets during an impact event, especially focusing on the viscous effect on splashing, which forms the spine which can be used to predict the impact velocity. To obtain a non-Newtonian viscosity model of blood for a computational fluid dynamic analysis, the venous blood samples of 163 people were tested using a hemorheology instrument. Among the venous blood samples of 163 people, 37 samples for which all blood test results were in a normal range were selected for the non-Newtonian viscosity modeling. From the CFD analysis, it could be concluded that a non-Newtonian viscosity model is more appropriate than a constant viscosity model for predicting splashing that forms the spine. The gradient of the non-Newtonian model at a high shear rate has more of an effect on spine formation than that at a low shear rate. The lowest viscosity with a high velocity at the outer front of the radiating flow plays an important role in forming the splashing pattern.