The Application of 3D Modelling in Biofluid

Mechanics
Ivan Dogan, Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Croatia, ivan2dogan@gmail.com
Sven Maricic, Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Croatia, sven@riscience.eu
Lado Kranjcevic, Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Croatia, lado.kranjcevic@riteh.hr
Ana Pilipovic, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Daniela Kovacevic Pavicic, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Croatia

INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is part of the research financed by the project IPA III c
Additive Technologies for the SMEs AdTecSME. The authors would
like to thank the European Union and the Ministry for the financing of
this project.

In modern engineering the development of computer simulations is

essential. Fast computer development has enabled more precise
modelling and analysis of anatomical models and the presentation of
different pathologies.
One of the topics that is getting more and more attention today is the
analysis of the condition of blood vessels and blood circulation in the
human body in general.
Blocking of blood vessels is one of the factors that may directly lead to
heart attack. Computer software for 3D modelling such as SolidWorks
or Blender can be used to develop models that may then be analysed
by one of the standard computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software
such as Fluent or OpenFoam.

REFERENCES
[1] Dogan, I.2014., Primjena 3D tiska u mehanici biofluidafinal
seminar, Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka
[2] http://ansys.com, 15.08.2014.
[3] Hong, J., Wei, L., Fu, C., Tan, W. 2008., Blood flow and
macromolecular transpost in complex blood vessels, Clinical
Biomechanics, vol. 23, suppl. 1, pp. S125-S129.

CFD IN BIOFLUID MECHANICS

Figure 2. Normal carotid artery

The flow of blood in the circulatory system is of extremely pulsating

character [1]. The cause of pulsation comes from the heart which
pumps the blood through blood vessels by contracting and expanding,
i.e. by pulsating. Blood vessels can be approximated by a model
(Figure 1)of viscoelastic tube of variable diameter and physical
properties of the wall.

Figure 1. Numerical analysis of blood flow computed with ANSYS Fluent

[2]. Material is an anisotropic hyperelastic tissue [1]

It is known that Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is responsible for

most of the deaths in patients with cardiovascular diseases. Stenosis
severity is diagnostically proven by angiography analysis.
Angiography gives main anatomical insight into the cardiovascular
system. The functional or physiological significance is more valuable
than the anatomical significance of CAD. Functional severity of the
stenosis is usually diagnosed by the invasive clinical measurement of
the pressure drop and flow.
This work studied the flow pattern in the carotid artery. In Figure 2
normal carotid artery flow is shown. Figure shows velocity vectors
shaded according to their magnitude. Computational fluid mechanics
simulation shows precise blood flow pattern.

Figure 3. Carotid artery with

stenosis

Flow in the same carotid artery but with stenosis is also modeled and
shown in Figure 3. Velocity field comparison of the two cases shows
quite different velocity pattern with strong pressure drop and velocity
increase in narrow part with stenosis. This flow obstacle causes
disturbed flow to propagate into both internal and external artery
causing also change in volume flow ratio between the branching
arteries.
Application of the CFD tool gives as velocity and pressure field in the
region of interest and with the desired detail, being totally noninvasive
at the same time. With the use of CFD we can also predict disease
propagation by numerically simulating the arterial stenosis grow in
time and analyzing future change in flow pattern as the flow obstacle
grows. This way clinicians can make decisions more easily and set
the time frame for future procedures.

CONCLUSION
Plaque deposition on the vessel wall significantly reduces the blood
flow rate. The consequences are different, and one of them is the risk
of various kinds of cardiovascular diseases. Flow simulation results in
two similar carotid arteries normal artery and artery with stenosis is
compared. Velocity field comparison shows quite different velocity
pattern with strong pressure drop and velocity increase in narrow part
with stenosis. This flow obstacle causes change in volume flow ratio
between the branching arteries.

[4] Ghodsi, S.R., Esfahanian, V., Shamsodini, R., Ghodsi, S. M.,

Ahmadi, G. 2013., Blood flow vectoring control in aortic using full and
partial clamps, Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 43, issue 9,
pp. 1134-1141.
[5] O'Callaghan, S., Walsh, M., McGloughlin, T. 2006., Numerical
modelling of Newtonian and non-Newtonian representation of blood in
a distal end-to-side vascular bypass graft anastomosis, Medical
Engineering & Physics, vol. 28, issue 1, pp. 70-74.
[6] Jafari, A., Zamankhan, P., Mousavi, S.M., Kolari, P. 2009.,
Numerical investigation of blood flow. Part II: In capillaries,
Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation, vol.
1, issue 4, pp. 1396-1402.
[7] Kalimuthu Govindaraju, Irfan Anjum Badruddin, Girish N.
Viswanathan, S.V. Ramesh, A. Badarudin, 2013., Evaluation of
functional severity of coronary artery disease and fluid dynamics'
influence on hemodynamic parameters, A Physica Medica, Volume
29, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 225-232
[8] Bo-Wen Lin, Pong-Jeu Lu, 2014., High-resolution Roes scheme
and characteristic boundary conditions for solving complex wave
reflection phenomena in a tree-like arterial structure, Journal of
Computational Physics, Volume 260, 1 March 2014, Pages 143-162
[9] Wei-Tao Wu, Nadine Aubry, Mehrdad Massoudi, Jeongho Kim,
James F. Antaki, 2014., A numerical study of blood flow using mixture
theory, International Journal of Engineering Science, Volume 76,
March 2014, Pages 56-72
[10] Noreen Sher Akbar, S. Nadee, Ain Shams, 2014., Carreau fluid
model for blood flow through a tapered artery with a stenosis,
Engineering Journal
[11] Waite, L., Fine, J., Applied biofluid mechanics, 2007., McGrawHill