Numerical study on turbulent blood flow in a stenosed artery bifurcation under periodic body acceleration using a modified k-epsilon model

Abstract

This article describes the numerical investigation of turbulent blood flow in the stenosed artery bifurcation under periodic acceleration of the human body. Numerical analyses for turbulent blood flow were performed for six simulation cases with different magnitude of periodic accelerations using a modified k-epsilon turbulence model which is considering drag reduction of non-Newtonian fluid. The blood was considered to be a non-Newtonian fluid which is based on the power-law viscosity model. In order to validate the modified k-epsilon model, numerical simulations were compared with laminar flow, the standard k-epsilon model and the Mali's turbulence model for power-law fluid. As results, laminar flow showed under predictions of blood velocity and wall shear stress, on the other hand, standard k-epsilon model over estimates. The modified k-epsilon model represents intermediate characteristics between laminar and standard k-epsilon model, and the modified k-epsilon model show good agreements with Mali's verified power law model. Moreover, the computing time and computer resource of the modified k-epsilon model are reduced about one third than low Reynolds number model including Mali's model.