A fluid-structure interaction analysis for the prediction of blood flow in saccular aneurysm

Recently, the rapid evolution of numerical methodologies for CFD and structural analyses made it possible to predict the arterial hemodynamics closely related to vascular diseases. A realistic fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis has been performed to predict arterial hemodynamics accurately with emphasis on the blood flow affected by the wall motion of compliant arteries. In the present study, a framework for the FSI analysis was developed by coupling the CFD and structural analyses based on the iterative coupling method. Using this framework, the numerical results from a FSI analysis on the hemodynamics in a saccular aneurysm were compared to those of an analysis without FSI. From the results, it was found that a FSI analysis needs to be performed to obtain accurate hemodynamic characteristics in the saccular aneurysm, because the blood flow in the saccular aneurysm is mainly produced by the wall motion of aneurysmal sac during a cardiac cycle.