Numerical Study of Blood Flow Through Carotid Bifurcation

Because atherosclerosis often occurs at the branching or bifurcation of an artery, fluid dynamics may play a very important role in atherogenesis. Several hypotheses have been proposed, and several experiments (Bharadvaj et al. 1982, Ku et al. 1985) were conducted to evaluate their relevences to the human carotid bifurcation. However, most of the numerical simulations were limited to 3D steady flow and only limited results from 3D unsteady flow simulations are available so far. The objective of this study is to investigate the nature of this pulsatile flow, and, further, study the influence of the flow on the diagnosis of atherosclerosis and the degree of stenosis (van Tyen et al. 1994).