Parametric study of porous media as substitutes for flow-diverter stent

Abstract

For engineers, generating a mesh in porous media (PMs) sometimes represents a smaller computational load than generating realistic stent geometries with computer fluid dynamics (CFD). For this reason, PMs have recently become attractive to mimic flow-diverter stents (FDs), which are used to treat intracranial aneurysms. PMs function by introducing a hydraulic resistance using Darcy's law; therefore, the pressure drop may be computed by test sections parallel and perpendicular to the main flow direction. However, in previous studies, the pressure drop parallel to the flow may have depended on the width of the gap between the stent and the wall of the test section. Furthermore, the influence of parameters such as the test section geometry and the distance over which the pressure drops was not clear. Given these problems, computing the pressure drop parallel to the flow becomes extremely difficult. The aim of the present study is to resolve this lack of information for stent modeling using PM and to compute the pressure drop using several methods to estimate the influence of the relevant parameters. To determine the pressure drop as a function of distance, an FD was placed parallel and perpendicular to the flow in test sections with rectangular geometries. The inclined angle method was employed to extrapolate the flow patterns in the parallel direction. A similar approach was applied with a cylindrical geometry to estimate loss due to pipe friction. Additionally, the pressure drops were computed by using CFD. To determine if the balance of pressure drops (parallel vs perpendicular) affects flow patterns, we calculated the flow patterns for an ideal aneurysm using PMs with various ratios of parallel pressure drop to perpendicular pressure drop. The results show that pressure drop in the parallel direction depends on test section. The PM thickness and the ratio of parallel permeability to perpendicular permeability affect the flow pattern in an ideal aneurysm. Based on the permeability ratio and the flow patterns, the pressure drop in the parallel direction can be determined.