Oxygen transport in a permeable model of abdominal aortic aneurysm

Abstract

This paper reports on modelling and simulation of the coupled mass and momentum transport through the arterial lumen and the porous arterial wall of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). The effect of porous structure and intramural flow, which is usually neglected, is essential to quantify the oxygen concentration in the aneurysmal wall and will be addressed in this work via a novel coupled fluid–porous structure–mass transport model for AAA. The computational solver provides a prediction of the filtration velocity and oxygen concentration in the artery and further simulations are used to investigate the relation between the wall oxygen concentration and permeability. The results demonstrate the essential coupling between blood and filtration flow and specifically how their interactions affect oxygen transport.

Keywords:

• Abdominal aortic aneurysm
• intraluminal thrombus
• porous media
• oxygen transport
• hypoxia

Acknowledgments

Funding for this work was provided by the Faculty Development Fund and the Duquesne University departmental support. The authors would like to thank Prof. Paolo Zunino for the numerous discussions and his invaluable collaboration during initial phase of this work. The authors also thank Prof. Spandan Maiti and Ronald Fortunato for the assistance with the preparation of the patient-specific geometry used in this study.

Authors’ contributions

RZ was responsible for project administration and designed the methodology. RZ and MD wrote the first draft and revised the manuscript. TC helped with data curation and visualization. All authors read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).