Investigation of Different Activities on the Hemodynamic Parameters of Left External Carotid Artery Using Fluid–Structure Interaction

Abstract

It is known that atherosclerosis disease can lead to narrowing of human arteries over time. In this research, the flow field in the left external carotid artery is studied numerically considering fluid–structure interactions and effect of different activities on the risk of atherosclerosis disease is evaluated. In this research, it is studied as to whether having physical exercise can reduce the risk of this disease to a great extent. The artery’s tissue is assumed homogeneous and isotropic hyperelastic in fluid–structure interaction simulations. The normal heart cycle (without physical activity) is considered 0.8 s (75 bpm), and the effects of normal and high activities (having physical exercise with heart rates of 100, 120 and 150 bpm) are studied on the artery’s parameters (one healthy subject is studied). It is shown that the results obtained by considering fluid–structure interaction are close to those of rigid wall consideration in low activity. However, when the person has very high activity (i.e., heart rates of 120 and 150 bpm), the differences become noticeable, and rigid wall assumption cannot be correct. Wall shear stress is one of the parameters that shows specific reaction to high exercise. Maximum difference between time average wall shear stress in normal activity and very high activity (150 bpm) is about 103.7% for FSI simulation. Wall shear stress also shows greater difference between fluid–structure interaction and rigid wall consideration with respect to the other parameters by 36.2% in very high activity.