Numerical investigation of stent implantation in a coronary artery using CFD

Atherosclerosis is one of the most important cardiovascular diseases, which can cause to significantreduction of lumen. Atherosclerosis is commonplace in coronary arteries. Stent implantation is one of the recentsolutions for this disease which can affect the blood flow patterns and hemodynamics parameters in arteries.In this study a two-dimensional approach for two rings around an artery was employed with the assumptions oflaminar, Newtonian and unsteady state flow for modeling the effect of stent on blood flow patterns,especially Wall Shear Stress (WSS). The key issues of this study is consideration of the effect of Reynoldsnumber (Re) and the ratio of distance between stent rings and diameter of artery (strut spacing, w/d) onWSS. Three regions around each stent ring are defined here and results are analyzed there. Based on thesimulation outputs, decrease of the Reynolds number can dramatically reduce the magnitude of WSS. Theresults show that increasing the value of w/d can have diverse effects regards to regions.

Keywords:

Stent Implantation , Coronary Artery , CFD