Numerical Analysis of Wall Shear Stress Parameters of Newtonian Pulsatile Blood Flow Through Coronary Artery and Correlation to Atherosclerosis

Abstract

The formation of atherosclerosis mainly depends on local hemodynamic blood flow parameters. The spatial and temporal variation of hemodynamic blood flow parameter is considered as an important factor for atherogenesis. The laminar, Newtonian pulsatile blood flow is considered for hemodynamic analysis of the idealized non-stenosis human coronary artery. To model and study the relationship between relative residence time (RRT), time-averaged wall shear stress (WSS) vector (TAWSSV), oscillatory shear index (OSI), and time-averaged WSS (TAWSS) the computational fluid dynamics technique are used. The study shows that higher OSI values are predicted at lower TAWSS and TAWSSV. At the low TAWSS areas the RRT attains a higher value, the region with high RRT correlates with atherosclerotic lesions on the artery wall. The local differences between RRT, OSI, and WSS magnitude may help to find predominantly where the atherosclerotic lesion progresses and develops at specific locations of the artery.