Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, Tennessee 37235-1592, USA.
Comput Biol Med. 2013 Sep;43(9):1098-113. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2013.05.023. Epub 2013 Jun 6.
Atherosclerotic plaque can cause severe stenosis in the artery lumen. Blood flow through a substantially narrowed artery may have different flow characteristics and produce different forces acting on the plaque surface and artery wall. The disturbed flow and force fields in the lumen may have serious implications on vascular endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and circulating blood cells. In this work a simplified model is used to simulate a pulsatile non-Newtonian blood flow past a stenosed artery caused by atherosclerotic plaques of different severity. The focus is on a systematic parameter study of the effects of plaque size/geometry, flow Reynolds number, shear-rate dependent viscosity and flow pulsatility on the fluid wall shear stress and its gradient, fluid wall normal stress, and flow shear rate. The computational results obtained from this idealized model may shed light on the flow and force characteristics of more realistic blood flow through an atherosclerotic vessel.
动脉粥样硬化斑块可导致动脉管腔严重狭窄。在明显狭窄的动脉中，血流的流动特征可能会有所不同，并在斑块表面和动脉壁上产生不同的力。管腔中紊乱的流动和力场可能对血管内皮细胞、平滑肌细胞和循环血细胞产生严重影响。在这项工作中，使用简化模型模拟由不同严重程度的动脉粥样硬化斑块引起的狭窄动脉中的脉动非牛顿血流。重点是系统地研究斑块大小/形状、流雷诺数、剪切率相关粘度和流脉动对流体壁切应力及其梯度、流体壁法向应力和流剪切率的影响。从这个理想化模型中获得的计算结果可能会揭示更真实的动脉粥样硬化血管中血流的流动和力特性。
