Search results

The purpose of this paper is to numerically model forced convection heat transfer within a patient‐specific carotid bifurcation and to examine the relationship between the temperature and wall shear stress.

The procedure employs a parallel, fully explicit (matrix free) characteristic based split scheme for the solution of incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations.

The arterial wall temperature, rather than the blood temperature dominates the regions of low wall shear stress and high oscillating shear stress. Additionally, negligible temperature gradient was detected proximal to the arterial wall in this locality.

The presented results demonstrate a possible mechanism for cold air temperature to influence the atherosclerotic plaque region proximal to the stenosis. The proposed patient‐specific heat transfer analysis also provides a starting point for the investigation of the influence of induced hypothermia on carotid plaque and its stability.

The purpose of this paper is to numerically study blood flow through a subject‐specific carotid artery with a moderately severe stenosis, also to thoroughly analyse the wall shear stress (WSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI) and WSS angular deviation (WSSAD). One of the important aspects of this study is the investigation on the influence of the extensions attached to the domain outlets.

The segmentation of the carotid artery is carried out using a deformable model based on a level set method. A geometric potential force (GPF) is employed to deform the level set to obtain the carotid artery geometry. The initial surface meshing is generated using an advanced marching cubes (MC) method, before improving the quality of the surface mesh via a number of mesh cosmetic steps. The volume mesh generation has two parts. In the first part, a quasi‐structured, boundary layer mesh is generated in the vicinity of the geometry walls. The second part of the meshing involves unstructured tetrahedral meshing of the inner part of the geometry. After the meshing stage, the flow boundary conditions are generated by numerically solving the Helmholtz equation in both space and time. Finally, the explicit characteristic‐based split (CBS) method is employed in a parallel environment to produce a detailed analysis of wall quantities.

In general, WSS is very high in the vicinity of the carotid artery apex and in the proximity of the stenosis. From the results obtained, it is clear that the influence of outlet domain extension is marginal. While the peak instantaneous WSS differs by a maximum of 5.7 per cent, the time‐averaged WSS difference due to extended domain is only 1.3 per cent. Two other derived parameters are also examined in the paper, the oscillating shear index and the WSSAD. Both these quantities also display minor or negligible differences due to domain extension.

It has been perceived that domain extension is essential to avoid wrong application of boundary conditions. The results obtained, however, conclusively show that the outlet domain extension has only a moderate influence on WSS. Thus, outlet extension to the domains may not be essential for arterial blood flows. It is also observed that the dramatic values of peak WSS obtained near the stenosis is the result of high resolution mesh along with boundary layers used in this study. Both the outcomes represent the originality of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse a class of finite element fractional step methods for solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The objective is not to reproduce the extensive contributions on the subject, but to report on long-term experience with and provide a unified overview of a particular approach: the characteristic-based split method. Three procedures, the semi-implicit, quasi-implicit and fully explicit, are studied and compared.

This work provides a thorough assessment of the accuracy and efficiency of these schemes, both for a first and second order pressure split.

In transient problems, the quasi-implicit form significantly outperforms the fully explicit approach. The second order (pressure) fractional step method displays significant convergence and accuracy benefits when the quasi-implicit projection method is employed. The fully explicit method, utilising artificial compressibility and a pseudo time stepping procedure, requires no second order fractional split to achieve second order or higher accuracy. While the fully explicit form is efficient for steady state problems, due to its ability to handle local time stepping, the quasi-implicit is the best choice for transient flow calculations with time independent boundary conditions. The semi-implicit form, with its stability restrictions, is the least favoured of all the three forms for incompressible flow calculations.

A comprehensive comparison between three versions of the CBS method is provided for the first time.

In the present work, a novel dual time stepping approach is applied to a quasi-implicit (QI) fractional step method and its performance is assessed against the classical versions of the QI procedure for the solution of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In the proposed method, a local time stepping algorithm is utilised to accelerate the solution to steady state, while the transient solution is recovered through the use of a dual time step. It is demonstrated that, unlike the classical fractional step method, the temporal convergence rate of the proposed method depends solely upon the choice of the time discretisation.

While additional stabilisation is the prerequisite for obtaining higher order accuracy in the standard QI methods, the proposed dual time stepping approach completely eliminates this requirement. In addition, the dual time stepping approach proposed achieves the correct formal accuracy in time for both velocity and pressure. It is also demonstrated that a time accuracy beyond second order for both pressure and velocity is possible. In summary, the proposed dual time approach to QI methods simplifies the algorithm, accelerates solution and achieves a higher order time accuracy.

The dual time stepping removed first order pressure error.