oa Haemodynamic Changes Due To Increased Severity In Stenosed Carotid Artery

The computational advances in recent times have led to analysis of the complex interaction of blood flow through elastic artery. This aids in prognosing the progression and behaviour of cardiovascular diseases like atherosclerosis, aneurysms etc. In the present investigation, an idealistic 66% eccentric stenosed common carotid artery is analyzed under normal blood pressure condition based on clinical data obtained from ultrasound measurements and 3D FSI model is generated in ANSYS, commercially available Finite Element Analysis software. The blood flow is assumed to be incompressible, homogenous and Newtonian, while artery wall is assumed to behave linearly elastic. The two-way sequentially coupled transient FSI analysis is performed using FSI solver in ANSYS-10.0 for three pulse cycles and haemodynamic parameters such as flow pattern, Wall Shear Stress, pressure contours and arterial wall deformation are studied at throat and downstream of the stenosis. Further, the flow changes with varying the severity of stenosis is also attempted to investigate the changes in flow behaviour by varying the percentage of stenosis in terms of 75%, 80%, 85%, 90% and 95%. Comparison of results concludes that, with the increase in severity of stenosis, the flow changes abruptly causing a significant increase in velocity and WSS at throat region, while highly complex flow is observed in the downstream of stenosis leading to formation of eddies. During flow deceleration, flow is further highly turbulent due to the effect of back pressure and considerably altering the flow behaviour in the downstream end. The results obtained agree very well with available clinical observation during various stenosed conditions.