Section: New Results

Numerical methods for fluid mechanics and application to blood flows

Participants: Irene Vignon-Clementel

If abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) are known to be associated with altered morphology and blood flow, intraluminal thrombus deposit and clinical symptoms, the growth mechanisms are yet to be fully understood. In this retrospective longitudinal study of 138 scans, morphological analysis and blood flow simulations for 32 patients with clinically diagnosed AAAs and several follow-up CT-scans, are performed and compared to 9 control subjects [21]. Local correlations between hemodynamic metrics and AAA growth are also explored. Finally, high-risk predictors trained with successively clinical, morphological, hemodynamic and all data, and their link to the AAA evolution are built from supervise learning.

In this paper [19], we perform a verification study of the Coupled-Momentum Method (CMM), a 3D fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model which uses a thin linear elastic membrane and linear kinematics to describe the mechanical behavior of the vessel wall. The verification of this model is done using Womersley's deformable wall analytical solution for pulsatile flow in a semi-infinite cylindrical vessel. This solution is, under certain premises, the analytical solution of the CMM and can thus be used for model verification. For the numerical solution, we employ an impedance boundary condition to define a reflection-free outflow boundary condition and thus mimic the physics of the analytical solution, which is defined on a semi-infinite domain. We first provide a rigorous derivation of Womersley's deformable wall theory via scale analysis. We then illustrate different characteristics of the analytical solution and verification tests comparing the CMM with Womersley's theory.

Superior cavopulmonary circulation can be achieved by either the Hemi-Fontan or Bidirectional Glenn connection. Debate remains as to which results in best hemodynamic results. In [22], adopting patient-specific multiscale computational modeling, we examined both the local dynamics and global physiology to determine if surgical choice can lead to different hemodynamic outcomes.