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Assessment of the applicability of analytical models for blood flow prediction in reconstructive surgery
Author(s) -
Drikakis D.,
Milionis C.,
Pal S. K.,
Patel S.,
Shapiro E.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in biomedical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.741
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 2040-7947
pISSN - 2040-7939
DOI - 10.1002/cnm.1401
Subject(s) - computational fluid dynamics , pressure drop , context (archaeology) , flow (mathematics) , limiting , blood flow , mechanics , mathematics , computer science , geometry , mechanical engineering , engineering , physics , medicine , geology , radiology , paleontology
Abstract Arterial flow in the context of plastic or reconstructive surgery is of primary importance to the successful outcome of the procedure. Analytic formulae, which are frequently used for the estimates of flow rates in these applications, introduce a number of assumptions about the geometry of the artery, the character of the flow and media properties of blood. This paper presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study of a ligated artery using real geometry taken from ex vivo intraoperative angiography of an axial flap. An analytical model is derived for this case under assumptions typically made in the literature and comparisons between the CFD study and the analytical model are presented. A systematic study to evaluate the effects of the assumptions made in constructing analytical models has been conducted, showing that the most limiting assumption is that of the simplified geometry that can lead to the pressure drop being under‐predicted by up to 2.65 times. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.