Numerical study of physiological turbulent flows through stenosed arteries

Abstract

A detailed analysis on the characteristics of transitional turbulent flow over a bell-shape stenosis for a physiological pulsatile flow is presented. The comparison of the numerical solutions to three types of pulsatile flows, including a physiological flow, an equivalent pulsatile flow and a simple pulsatile flow, are made in this work. Then the effects of the Reynolds number, Womersley number and constriction ratio of stenosis on the pulsatile turbulent flow fields for the physiological flow are considered. The comparison of the three pulsatile flows shows that the flow characteristics cannot be properly estimated if an equivalent or simple pulsatile inflow is used instead of actual physiological one in the study of the pulsatile flows through arterial stenosis. The equivalent or simple pulsatile inflow can lead to higher disturbance intensity in the vicinity of the stenosis than the physiological inflow. For a physiological flow, the recirculation zones with high disturbance intensity occur mainly in the distal of the stenosis. The larger Reynolds number and severer constriction ratio may result in more complex flow field and cause some important flow variables to increase dramatically near stenosis. The higher Womersley number leads to a larger phase lag between the imposed flow rate changes and the final converged flow field in one cycle. The turbulence intensity decreases with the increase of Womersley number for the same Reynolds number.