Computational simulation of blood flow in the right coronary artery and the interaction between the blood flow and the arterial wall

Flow through a heart artery is modeled using computational fluid dynamics with and without a more detailed fluid–structure interaction model. The study describes the interactions between the blood flow and the arterial wall. Blood rheological properties are modeled using the Bird-Carreau model. The flow path is comprised by the right coronary artery and two branches (bifurcations), namely the acute marginal (AM) and the posterior descending (PDA) sections. Inlet velocity values of a typical cardiac cycle are used in the model. The differences between the solutions from the FSI (fluid–structure interaction) model and the CFD (computation fluid dynamics) model were determined by comparing the wall shear stresses and the first principal stresses. Wall shear stresses (WSSs) and first principal stresses for four separate times (0.05, 0.14, 0.44 and 0.96 s) are reported. At 0.14 s and 0.96 s, the values of the wall shear stress (WSS) maxima are greater than those previously computed using FSI by 10.8 and 7.5 Pa, respectively. Similarly at 0.44 s, significant differences were obtained in WSS distributions between both solutions. The largest first principal stress was of 552 kPa in the bifurcation of the PDA at a time of 0.44 s.