An efficient, localised approach for the simulation of elastic blood vessels using the lattice Boltzmann method

TL;DR

This paper introduces a localized lattice Boltzmann method to simulate elastic blood vessels, improving accuracy over rigid wall models while maintaining computational efficiency, and effectively capturing wall shear stress trends in personalized geometries.

Contribution

A novel localized approach for simulating elastic vessel walls with the lattice Boltzmann method, enhancing accuracy without increasing computational costs.

Findings

More accurate flow behavior in elastic vessels compared to rigid models

Maintains computational performance similar to rigid wall simulations

Captures wall shear stress trends in personalized geometries

Abstract

Many numerical studies of blood flow impose a rigid wall assumption due to the simplicity of its implementation compared to a full coupling to a solid mechanics model. In this paper, we present a localised method for incorporating the effects of elastic walls into blood flow simulations using the lattice Boltzmann method. We demonstrate that our approach is able to more accurately capture the flow behaviour expected in an elastic walled vessel than a rigid wall model and achieves this without a loss of computational performance. We also demonstrate that our approach can capture trends in wall shear stress distribution captured by fully coupled models in personalised vascular geometries.