Blood Damage Quantification in Cardiovascular Flows Through Medical Devices Using a Novel Suspension Flow Method.

Blood damage is a major concern for cardiovascular flows with the presence of implanted medical devices. The use of computational simulations to model flow through medical devices can characterize and analyze flows in ways that experiments cannot. A truly multiphase flow solver can be used to quantify blood damage by modeling suspended particles with finite size and meshed surfaces for tracking shear stresses. The aim of this research is to numerically study blood damage that occurs in medical devices in cardiovascular flows, starting with a baseline case of bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) flows. The suspension flow method combines lattice-Boltzmann (LBM) fluid modeling [1] with the external boundary force method [2]. The fluid-solid coupling will employ the novel external boundary force (EBF) method, which is validated as 2nd order accurate. In the future, this methodology can be used to evaluate newer medical devices with accurate flow modeling, blood damage quantification, and parallel computing.