Numerical investigation of the behaviour of wall shear stress in three-dimensional pulsatile stenotic flows

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical study of the behaviour of wall shear stress (WSS) in three-dimensional pulsatile flow through an axisymmetric stenosed artery. A realistic blood flow rate (250 ml min-1 at rest in coronary artery [7]) and cardiac cycle (T=0.84s [5]) are applied in the simulations. The flow is fully three-dimensional, and the fluid is assumed to be Newtonian and incompressible. Direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the Navier-Stokes equations is carried out to investigate how different levels of stenosis (S) affect WSS. It has been found that larger values of S lead to higher WSS in the stenosis region due to the faster flow velocity at the throat (smaller cross-sectional area)...