Experimental and numerical investigation of the stenosed coronary artery taken from the clinical setting and modeled in terms of hemodynamics

The study was carried out to investigate the effect of the artery with different pulse values and stenosis rates on the pressure drop, the peristaltic pump outlet pressure, fractional flow reserve (FFR) and most importantly the amount of power consumed by the peristaltic pump. For this purpose, images taken from the clinical environment were produced as models (10 mm inlet diameter) with 0% and 70% percent areal stenosis rates (PSR) on a three-dimensional (3D) printer. In the experimental system, pure water was used as the fluid at 54, 84, 114, 132, and 168 bpm pulse values. In addition, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyzes of the test region were performed using experimental boundary conditions with the help of ANSYS-Fluent software. The findings showed that as PSR increases in the arteries, the pressure drop in the stenosis region increases and this amount increases dramatically with increasing effort. An increase of approximately 40% was observed in the pump outlet pressure value from 54 bpm to 168 bpm in the PSR 0% model and 51% increase in the PSR 70% model. It has been observed that the pump does more work to overcome the increased pressure difference due to increased pulse rate and PSR. With the effect of contraction, the power consumption of the pump increased from 9.2% for 54 bpm to 13.8% for 168 bpm. In both models, the Wall Shear Stress (WSS) increased significantly. WSS increased abruptly in the stenosis and arcuate regions, while sudden decreases were observed in the flow separation region.