Due to their diverse types, complex causes, high incidence, and difficult treatment, lung diseases have become major killers threatening human life and health, and some lung diseases have a significant impact on alveolar morphology and histology. Numerical simulation of alveolar mechanical response, alveolar flow field information, multiphase flow, and material transport based on computational fluid dynamics is of great significance for lung disease diagnosis, clinical treatment, and in vitro experiments. Starting from the simplification and pathological differences of geometric and mechanical models, this paper analyzes and summarizes the conditions and application scenarios of the airflow dynamics calculation method in pulmonary alveoli, to provide a reference for further simulation and application of the alveolar region.
Objective To investigate the effects of different types of tricuspid regurgitation, implantation positions, and device models on the treatment outcomes of K-Clip for tricuspid regurgitation using numerical simulations. Methods Three-dimensional reconstruction of the heart model was performed based on CT images. Two different regurgitation orifices were obtained by modifying the standard parameterized tricuspid valve leaflets and chordae tendineae. The effects of different K-Clip models at different implantation positions (posterior leaflet midpoint, anterior-posterior commissure, anterior leaflet midpoint, posterior septal commissure) were simulated using commercial explicit dynamics software Ls-Dyna. Conclusion For the two types of regurgitation in this study, clipping at the posterior leaflet midpoint resulted in a better reduction of the regurgitation orifice (up to 75% reduction in area). Higher clamping forces were required for implantation at the anterior leaflet midpoint and posterior septal commissure, which was unfavorable for the smooth closure of the clipping components. There was no statistical difference in the treatment outcomes between the 18T and 16T K-Clip components, and the 16T component required less clamping force. Therefore, the use of the 16T K-Clip component is recommended.
This study analyzed the inherent relation between arterial blood mass flow and muscle atrophy of residual limb to provide some necessary information and theoretical support for the clinical rehabilitation of lower limb amputees. Three-dimensional arterial model reconstruction was performed on both intact side and residual limb of a unilateral transfemoral amputee who is the subject. Then hemodynamic calculation was carried out to comparatively analyze the mass flow state at each arterial outlet of both lower extremities. The muscle atrophy ratio of residual limb was calculated by measuring the cross-sectional area of bilateral muscles. Based on the blood supply relationship, the correlation between arterial blood flow reduction ratio and muscle atrophy ratio was discussed. The results showed that the mass flow of superficial femoral arteries and lateral circumflex femoral arteries severely reduced. Meanwhile rectus femoris, vastus lateralis and vastus medialis which were fed by these arteries showed great atrophy too. On the contrary, the mass flow of deep femoral arteries and medial femoral circumflex arteries slightly reduced. Meanwhile gracilis, adductor longus, long head of biceps which were fed by these arteries showed mild atrophy too. These results indicated that there might be a positive and promotion correlation between the muscle atrophy ratio and the blood mass flow reduction ratio of residual limb during rehabilitation.
Computational fluid dynamics was used to investigate the effect of the pathogenesis of membranous obstruction of inferior vena cava of Budd-Chiari syndrome with various angles between right hepatic vein and inferior vena cava. Mimics software was used to reconstruct the models from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) angiograms of inferior vena cava, right hepatic vein, middle hepatic vein and left hepatic vein, and 3DMAX was used to construct the models of 30°, 60°, 90° and 120° angles between right hepatic vein and inferior vena cava, which was based on the reconstructed models.The model was conducted with clinical parameters in terms of wall shear stress distribution, static pressure distribution and blood velocity. The results demonstrated that the differences between wall shear stress and static pressure had statistical significance with various angles between right hepatic vein and inferior vena cava by SPSS. The pathogenesis of membranous obstruction of inferior vena cava had a correlation with the angles between right hepatic vein and inferior vena cava.
A solid-liquid two-phase finite element model of articular cartilage and a microscopic finite element model of chondrocytes were established using the finite element software COMSOL in this study. The purpose of the study is to investigate the mechanics environment and the liquid flow field of the host cartilage chondrocytes in each layer by multi-scale method, under physiological load, with the different elastic modulus of artificial cartilage to repair cartilage defect. The simulation results showed that the uniform elastic modulus of artificial cartilage had different influences on the microenvironment of different layer chondrocytes. With the increase of the elastic modulus of artificial cartilage, the stress of the shallow surface layer and the intermediate layer chondrocytes increased and the stress of deep layer chondrocytes decreased. The flow field direction of the middle layer and the bottom layer of cartilage can also be changed by artificial cartilage implantation, as well as the ways of nourishment supply of the middle layer and underlying chondrocytes change. A barrier to underlying chondrocytes nutrition supply may be caused by this, thus resulting in the uncertainty of the repair results. With cross-scale finite element model simulation analysis of chondrocytes, we can quantitatively evaluate the mechanical environment of chondrocytes in each layer of the host cartilage. It is helpful to assess the clinical effect of cartilage defect reparation more accurately.
In order to investigate the application of lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) in the numerical simulation of computed tomography angiography-derived fractional flow reserve (FFRCT), an idealized narrowed tube model and two coronary stenosis arterymodels are studied. Based on the open source code library (Palabos), the relative algorithm program in the development environment (Codeblocks) was improved. Through comparing and analyzing the results of FFRCT which is simulated by LBM and finite element analysis software ANSYS, and the feasibility of the numerical simulation of FFRCT by LBM was verified . The results show that the relative error between the results of LBM and finite element analysis software ANSYS is about 1%, which vertifies the feasibility of simulating the coronary FFRCT by LBM. The simulation of this study provides technical support for developing future FFRCT application software, and lays the foundation for the calculation of clinical FFRCT.
The high rotational speed of the axial flow blood pump and flow separation of the centrifugal blood pump are the main causes for blood damage in blood pump. The mixed flow blood pump can effectively alleviate the high rotational speed and the flow separation. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to explore the performance of the mixed blood pump with a closed impeller. A mixed flow blood pump with closed impeller was studied by numerical simulation in this paper. The flow field characteristics and the pressure distribution of this type of blood pump were analyzed. The hydraulic performance of the blood pump and the possible damages to red blood cells were also discussed. At last, pump performance was compared with the mixed flow blood pump with semi-open impeller. The results show that the mixed flow blood pump with close impeller studied in this paper can operate safely and efficiently with a good performance. The pump can reach the pressure head of 100 mmHg at 5 L/min mass flow rate. Flow in the blood pump is uniform and no obvious separation or vortex occurs. Pressure distribution in and on the impeller is uniform and reasonable, which can effectively avoid the thrombosis of blood. The average mean value of hemolysis index is 4.99 × 10−4. The pump has a good biocompatibility. Compared with the mixed flow blood pump with semi-open impeller, the mixed flow blood pump with closed impeller has higher head and efficiency, a smaller mean value of hemolysis index prediction, a better hydraulic performance and the ability to avoid blood damage. The results of this study may provide a basis for the performance evaluation of the closed impeller mixed flow blood pump.
The current finite element analysis of vascular stent expansion does not take into account the effect of the stent release pose on the expansion results. In this study, stent and vessel model were established by Pro/E. Five kinds of finite element assembly models were constructed by ABAQUS, including 0 degree without eccentricity model, 3 degree without eccentricity model, 5 degree without eccentricity model, 0 degree axial eccentricity model and 0 degree radial eccentricity model. These models were divided into two groups of experiments for numerical simulation with respect to angle and eccentricity. The mechanical parameters such as foreshortening rate, radial recoil rate and dog boning rate were calculated. The influence of angle and eccentricity on the numerical simulation was obtained by comparative analysis. Calculation results showed that the residual stenosis rates were 38.3%, 38.4%, 38.4%, 35.7% and 38.2% respectively for the 5 models. The results indicate that the pose has less effect on the numerical simulation results so that it can be neglected when the accuracy of the result is not highly required, and the basic model as 0 degree without eccentricity model is feasible for numerical simulation.
A three-dimensional (3D) model of human anterior chamber is reconstructed to explore the effect of different corneal temperatures on the heat transfer in the chamber. Based on the optical coherence tomography imaging of the volunteers with normal anterior chamber, a 3D anterior chamber model was reconstructed by the method of UG parametric design. Numerical simulation of heat transfer and aqueous humor flow in the whole anterior chamber were analyzed by the finite volume methods at different corneal temperatures. The results showed that different corneal temperatures had obvious influence on the temperature distribution and the aqueous flow in the anterior chamber. The temperature distribution is linear and axial symmetrical around the pupillary axis. As the temperature difference increases, the symmetry becomes poorer. Aqueous floated along the warm side and sank along the cool side which forms a vortexing flow. Its velocity increased with the addition of temperature difference. Heat fluxes of cornea, lens andiris were mainly affected by the aqueous velocity. The higher the velocity, the bigger more absolute value of the above-mentioned heat fluxes became. It is practicable to perform the numerical simulation of anterior chamber by the optical coherence tomography imaging. The results are useful for studying the important effect of corneal temperature on the heat transfer and aqueous humor dynamics in the anterior chamber.
External support stent is a potential means for restricting the deformation and reducing wall stress of the vein graft, thereby improving the long-term patency of the graft in coronary artery bypass surgery. However, there still lacks a theoretical reference for choosing the size of stent based on the diameter of graft. Taking the VEST (venous external support) stent currently used in the clinical practice as the object of study, we constructed three models of VEST stents with different diameters and coupled them respectively to a model of the great saphenous vein graft, and numerically simulated the expansion-contraction process of the vein graft under the constraint of the stents to quantitatively evaluate the influence of stent size on the radial deformation and wall stress of the vein graft. The results showed that while the stent with a small diameter had a high restrictive effect in comparison with larger stents, it led to more severe concentration of wall stress and sharper changes in radial deformation along the axis of the graft, which may have adverse influence on the graft. In order to solve the aforementioned problems, we ameliorated the design of the stent by means of changing the cross-sectional shape of the thick and thin alloy wires from circle into rectangle and square, respectively, while keeping the cross-sectional areas of alloy wires and stent topology unchanged. Further numerical simulations demonstrated that the ameliorated stent evidently reduced the degrees of wall stress concentration and abrupt changes in radial deformation, which may help improve the biomechanical environment of the graft while maintaining the restrictive role of the stent.