The influence of physiological flow development on popular wall shear stress metrics in an idealized curved artery

TL;DR

This study numerically examines how flow development affects secondary flow patterns and wall shear stress metrics in a curved artery model, revealing implications for arterial disease assessment.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of flow development on secondary flow and shear stress metrics in a simplified curved artery model, highlighting the importance of inlet conditions.

Findings

Undeveloped flow reduces secondary flow intensity.

Wall shear stress variability depends on flow development.

Flow development influences disease-related stress metrics.

Abstract

We numerically investigate the influence of flow development on secondary flow patterns and subsequent wall shear stress distributions in a curved artery model, and we compute vascular metrics commonly used to assess variations in blood flow characteristics as it applies to arterial disease. We model a human artery with a simple, rigid 180-degree curved tube with circular cross-section and constant curvature, neglecting effects of taper, torsion and elasticity. High-fidelity numerical results are computed from an in-house discontinuous spectral element flow solver. The flow rate used in this study is physiological. We perform this study using a Newtonian blood-analog fluid subjected to a pulsatile flow with two inflow conditions. The first flow condition is fully developed while the second condition is undeveloped (i.e. uniform). We observe and discuss differences in secondary flow patterns that emerge over the rapid acceleration and deceleration phases of the physiological waveform, and we directly connect the variation in intensity of these secondary flow patterns along the curvature to differences in the wall shear stress metrics for each entrance condition. Results indicate that decreased axial velocities under an undeveloped condition produce less intense secondary flow that, in turn, reduces both the oscillatory and multidirectional nature of the wall shear stress vector, and we link this effect to abnormalities in computed stress metrics. These results suggest potentially lower prevalence of disease in curvatures where entrance flow is rather undeveloped-a physiologically relevant result to further understand the influence of blood flow development on disease.