Investigation the Effect of Velocity inlet and Carrying Fluid on the Flow inside Coronary Artery

TL;DR

This study uses OpenFOAM to analyze how different inlet velocities and fluids affect flow characteristics in coronary arteries, providing insights for future heat transfer modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical simulation of coronary artery flow considering various velocities and fluids using RANS equations and MRI-based boundary conditions.

Findings

Increased inlet velocity raises velocity, pressure, and wall shear stress at narrow regions.

Different fluids influence flow patterns and shear stresses.

Mesh refinement improves simulation accuracy.

Abstract

In this study OpenFOAM 4.4.2 was used to investigate flow inside the coronary artery of the heart. This step is the first step of our future project, which is to include conjugate heat transfer of the heart with three main coronary arteries. Three different velocities were used as inlet boundary conditions to see the effect of velocity increase on velocity, pressure, and wall shear of coronary artery. Also, three different fluids namely the University of Wisconsin solution, Gelatin, and blood was used to investigate the effect of different fluids on flow inside coronary artery. A code based on Reynolds Stress Navier Stokes (RANS) equations was written and was implemented with the real boundary condition that was calculated based on MRI images. In order to improve the accuracy of the current numerical scheme, hex dominant mesh is utilized. When the inlet velocity increases to 0.5 m/s, velocity, wall shear stress, and pressure increase at the narrower parts.