Analysis of Flow Characteristics at the Stenoic Femoropopliteal Artery

Abstract

Femoropopliteal arterial disease is a narrowing of the blood vessel in the lower limp which might be clogged if not immediately treated. The blood flow characteristic at the stenotic region represents the flow recirculation which is prone to the growth of thrombosis. This phenomenon occurred due to the influence of hemodynamic factors such as low wall shear stress (WSSlow), normal WSS, and wall shear stress gradient (WSSG). The formation of thrombosis become severe with the growth of the stenotic region. Thus, this study aims to determine the flow characteristic due to the effect of the hemodynamic differences for different sizes of stenosis at the femoropopliteal artery. Four different geometrical models of the femoropopliteal artery with different sizes of stenosis are modelled. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) method with the steady-state conditions was implemented in the study. Three different pulsating waveforms were also imposed: peak systolic, end-diastolic, and mid-diastolic. The result shows that the pressure drops abruptly in the stenotic region of Model D as compared to others. Furthermore, the velocity has also seen significant increases when the pressure drop. From the observation, the peak systolic time shows the lowest WSSlow whilst the end-diastolic shows the highest of WSSlow for all models. However, Model A shows the highest WSSlow percentages as compared to others which re-present the highest growth of atherosclerosis approximately 95.8 %.  However, all four models at end diastolic time show no presence of thrombosis. In a summary, the prediction of thrombosis formation is the highest for Model B, approximately 13.13%.