Analysis of Volumetric Residence Time of Blood Elements in Stenosed Arteries
Blood flow in arteries is known to be closely related to atherosclerosis. Presence of recirculation zones, and low, high, and oscillatory wall shear stresses have been suggested to be important fluid dynamic factors causing development and progress of atherosclerosis. Our study was motivated to develop fluid mechanical indices between residence time of blood particles in arteries and atherosclerosis. In rigid models of stenosed arteries with 75% area reduction, trajectories of blood particles were numerically computed and used to determine local volumetric residence time (VRT) of platelets. The motion of particles in the model artery was computed by considering viscous drag forces between blood particles and presolved transient flow field from computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Many cardiac cycles were considered in the computation to reflect temporally accumulative characteristics of VRT in the recirculation zones. Our results showed that VRT in the recirculation zone was relatively low in the first cardiac cycle. However it increased in the subsequent cycles as more particles were trapped in the same zone. The results suggested that VRT contour calculated in the present study would be an effective indicator of the presence of atherosclerosis.