Arterial Occlusion

Description: This study uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate blood flow through an occluded, bifurcated artery, examining how varying degrees of stenosis at the vessel's center affect flow behavior. Blood is modeled with a density of 1060 kg/m³ and dynamic viscosity of 0.35 kg/m·s, entering through two inlet branches at a combined mass flow rate of 0.002385 kg/s, with vessel walls treated as rigid.

Methodology: The stenotic geometry is generated from a parametric curve defined by y = 0.0002475cos(πx/0.001), which produces the coordinate points forming the narrowed profile; a 30% stenosis, for example, corresponds to a constricted diameter equal to 70% of the normal vessel diameter. The geometry is built in ANSYS DesignModeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing with a structured grid of 85,222 elements. To capture how flow behavior changes with blockage severity, the stenosis is systematically varied across seven cases spanning 30% to 90% occlusion, each solved under matching inlet and boundary conditions.

Analysis: Post-processing includes 2D pressure and velocity distributions, along with pathline and vector visualizations. Velocity contours peak at the stenotic throat where the cross-sectional area is smallest, while pressure drops downstream of the constriction to levels below those at the inlet branches. Comparing pressure, velocity, and pressure differential across the seven stenosis cases shows that greater occlusion consistently produces larger pressure losses and higher velocities through the narrowed zone, directly reflecting the increased flow obstruction as blockage severity rises.