Title: Computational fluid dynamics analysis of carotid artery with different plaque shapes

Authors: Raman Yadav; Sharda Vashisth; Ranjit Varma

Addresses: Electronics and Electrical Engineering Department, K.R. Mangalam University, Gurgaon, Haryana, India ' Electrical, Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, The NorthCap University, Gurgaon, Haryana, India ' Delhi Technical Campus, Greater Noida, India

Abstract: Plaque formation in the carotid artery results in carotid artery disease. Atherosclerotic plaque is mostly found at the branching and bifurcation of the artery. The present work investigates the effect of wall shear stress (WSS) and blood flow through carotid artery under various stenosis shapes. Five plaque shapes are considered, i.e., plaque at branching, plaque at bifurcation, cosine plaque, irregular plaque, blood clot in external artery. WSS and velocity of blood through stenosed artery was simulated and analysed using ANSYS FLUENT computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Comparison of the wall shear stress at wall artery showed that the artery having blood clot has maximum WSS followed by plaque at bifurcation, cosine shape, irregular shaped stenosis and plaque at branching. It is found that shapes of stenosis play key role in WSS, as stenosis increases in artery WSS also increases. The velocity of flow across stenosis is highest for artery having plaque at bifurcation followed by plaque at branching, irregular plaque, cosine plaque and artery having clot.

Keywords: wall shear stress; WSS; atherosclerosis; bifurcation; stenosis; plaque shape; computational fluid dynamics; CFD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2022.125319

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2022 Vol.14 No.5, pp.464 - 472

Received: 12 Aug 2020
Accepted: 24 Dec 2020
Published online: 07 Sep 2022 *

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