Modeling of blood flow in a balloon-pulsed intravascular respiratory catheter.

A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed and used to simulate blood flow associated with our pulsating respiratory catheter. A principal goal of this CFD study was to evaluate how the balloon-generated flow permeated through the fiber bundle and interacted with the flow past the catheter. The simulation showed that the flow inside the fiber bundle was uniform longitudinally and circumferentially despite the nonuniform flow patterns around the bundle. Thus, the flow conditions inside the fiber bundle remained optimal for the blood oxygenation process. The results indicate the shunt flow around the fiber bundle decreased with increasing balloon pulsation rate.