Computational studies of comparative and cumulative effects of turbulence, fluid–structure interactions, and uniform magnetic fields on pulsatile non-Newtonian flow in a patient-specific carotid artery

Abstract

Clinical evidence has shown that hemodynamics plays an important role in vascular diseases that hemodynamic parameters are highly dependent on the elasticity of the artery wall. Since so far, no study has not been done about turbulent and non-Newtonian blood flow in carotid artery under a magnetic field, in this study we use computational fluid dynamics and fluid–structure interaction (FSI) models to study the hemodynamics of a patient-specific carotid artery. The comparative and cumulative effects of turbulence modeling, arterial wall elasticity, and magnetic field intensities are investigated by quantifying their effects on different variables of interest. These variables include blood pressure, time-averaged wall shear stress, relative residence time (RRT), and oscillating shear index (OSI), which are important in the onset and development of atherosclerosis. The results showed that the effects of turbulence are significant for predictions of OSI, while for other variables the turbulent simulation results were comparable to laminar simulations. The effects of wall elasticity were significant for all variables, such that FSI modeling will be essential for an accurate computational framework. The effects of magnetic fields were also found to be relatively significant. By increasing Hartman number from zero to five, the maximum shear stress was reduced by about 10%. Other effects of increased intensity of magnetic field included reduction in the average amount of RRT, sharp decrease in the OSI > 0 region, and transfer of maximum OSI from distal part of carotid sinus to the proximal part.