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Non‐Newtonian flow in branched pipes and artery models
Author(s) -
Barth William L.,
Branets Larisa V.,
Carey Graham F.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
international journal for numerical methods in fluids
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1097-0363
pISSN - 0271-2091
DOI - 10.1002/fld.1803
Subject(s) - morphing , polygon mesh , finite element method , domain decomposition methods , newtonian fluid , mesh generation , mechanics , shear thinning , flow (mathematics) , mechanical engineering , engineering drawing , computer science , geometry , engineering , materials science , mathematics , structural engineering , physics , viscosity , composite material , computer graphics (images)
This work concerns finite element analysis for a class of generalized Newtonian flows through branching pipe or tube junctions in industrial applications or blood flow through arterial branches, prosthetic tube implants or in biomedical engineering devices. A two‐step morphing transformation is developed and implemented to map a generic coplanar 3D branching flow configuration to general out‐of‐plane deformed geometry including local constriction/dilation ‘defects’ suitable for modeling specific arterial flow and industrial flow applications. Unstructured 3D meshes may be generated in the reference configuration and morphed to the application configuration. The resulting meshes may be tangled and exhibit mesh quality degradation. Algorithms integrating mesh generation, morphing, untangling and cell shape control strategies are presented. Phenomenological studies are conducted with the Powell–Eyring class as a representative model to determine local details of shear‐thinning flow behavior as well as the nature and location of high shear stress regions on artery branch walls. The supporting simulations are carried out using a parallel finite element scheme with domain decomposition by a sectional partitioning that takes advantage of the medial curve shape and specialized ILU preconditioning. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.