Background: The usefulness of numerical modelling of a patient's cardiovascular system is growing in clinical treatment. Understanding blood flow mechanics can be crucial in identifying connections between haemodynamic factors and aortic wall pathologies.
Objective: This work investigates the haemodynamic parameters of an ascending aorta and ascending aortic aneurysm in humans.
Methods: Two aortic models were constructed from medical images using the SimVascular software. FEM blood flow modelling of cardiac cycle was performed using CFD and CMM-FSI at different vascular wall parameters.
Results: The results showed that highest blood velocity was 1.18 m/s in aorta with the aneurysm and 1.9 m/s in healthy aorta model. The largest displacements ware in the aorta with the aneurysm (0.73 mm). In the aorta with the aneurysm, time averaged WSS values throughout the artery range from 0 Pa to 1 Pa. In the healthy aorta, distribution of WSS values changes from 0.3 Pa to 0.6 Pa.
Conclusions: In the case of an ascending aortic aneurysm, the maximum blood velocity was found to be 1.6 times lower than in the healthy aorta. The aneurysm-based model demonstrates a 45% greater wall displacement, while the oscillatory shear index decreased by 30% compared to healthy aortic results.
Keywords: Ascending aortic aneurysm; SimVascular; blood flow; computational fluid dynamics (CFD); finite element method (FEM).