Modelling and Simulation of Blood Flow in Human Vessels Using CFD Analysis

Bioheat transfer plays an important role in analyzing living systems due to its ability to diagnose and treat the disease. Recently, CFD has been increasingly used in biomedical researches of coronary artery disease because of its high hardware and software performance that makes it possible to identify and treat the risk factors for coronary artery disease progression. The purpose of this paper was to investigate blood flow and heat transfer in normal state and in several cases of plaque with a real geometric model of a vessel in an artery by using a commercial Software. Blood is considered as a non-Newtonian and non-compressible fluid and viscosity is modeled using Carreau equations. Unlike many previous studies, the inlet velocity is considered to be transient (pulsatile) and heat transfer has been investigated with the assumptions of constant blood inlet temperature and constant vessels wall temperature and the outlet wall heat transfer has been calculated. A real geometric model in different plaque progressions has been studied as well. Plaque progression in the artery, increases the wall pressure and shear stress, which is very dangerous in cases of severe blockage and may cause high risk of rupture. Increased plaque also reduces the blood heat transfer to the artery’s walls. The results show that there is a change between 10-70% in the dynamic parameters after clogging, but there is no significant change in the outlet temperature.