Fluid-solid interaction in arteries incorporating the autoregulation concept in boundary conditions

Abstract

In pre-surgery decisions in hospital emergency cases, fast and reliable results of the solid and fluid mechanics problems are of great interest to clinicians. In the current investigation, an iterative process based on a pressure-type boundary condition is proposed in order to reduce the computational costs of blood flow simulations in arteries, without losing control of the important clinical parameters. The incorporation of cardiovascular autoregulation, together with the well-known impedance boundary condition, forms the basis of the proposed methodology. With autoregulation, the instabilities associated with conventional pressure-type or impedance boundary conditions are avoided without an excessive increase in computational costs. The general behaviour of pulsatile blood flow in arteries, which is important from the clinical point of view, is well reproduced through this new methodology. In addition, the interaction between the blood and the arterial walls occurs via a modified weak coupling, which makes the simulation more stable and computationally efficient. Based on in vitro experiments, the hyperelastic behaviour of the wall is characterised and modelled. The applications and benefits of the proposed pressure-type boundary condition are shown in a model of an idealised aortic arch with and without an ascending aorta dissection, which is a common cardiovascular disorder.

Keywords:

• FSI
• pressure boundary condition
• autoregulation
• impedance
• aorta

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the funding received from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the research project DPI2011-27609/DPI and are grateful to Dr Javier Rodríguez and other members of the staff of PRINCIPIA Ingenieros Consultores S.A. for their comments and collaboration.

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.