The influence of geometric imperfections in cardiovascular FSI simulations

We present a study of the fluid-structure interaction in an idealized end-to-end anastomosis of a vascular bypass-graft and an artery. Special attention is paid to the impact of geometric imperfections in the artery and the flow path of the upstream vessel segment on the hemodynamics. A partitioned solution approach is applied and developed further to solve the coupled problem in an implicit manner. To stabilize and accelerate the convergence of the staggered coupling iterations, an interface quasi-Newton least squares method is applied. While the finite volume method is used for the fluid mechanics subproblem, high order finite elements serve to discretize the structural subproblem. A convergence study shows the efficiency of the high-order elements in the context of nearly incompressible, anisotropic materials used to model circular and irregular-shaped segments of an artery. The fluid-structure interaction simulations reveal a dominant influence of the upstream vessel's curvature, which, however, decays rapidly in straight sections where the influence of geometric imperfections is dominant. Based on the proposed simulation approach, hemodynamic parameters such as the oscillating shear index can be directly linked to the shape and the intensity of the imperfections. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.