Computational Fluid Dynamics of Carotid Artery Blood Flow for Low-Gravity Environments

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been an effective tool for obtaining insight into the circulatory system's physical functioning. Herein, we evaluate the blood flow throughout the human right carotid artery in weightlessness and earth gravity environments. The 3D carotid artery design was developed in Creo, and Ansys Fluent was used to analyze the dynamics of blood flow. To simulate the model, boundary conditions were assigned in the Ansys software and some conditions are were as follows: Blood was built as a non-Newtonian liquid, the laminar flow model was employed for analysis and gravity was employed in Ansys with a negative z-axis. Simulation of blood flow gave the velocity in inlet and outlet regions with earth's gravity and microgravity. CFD investigation of blood flow for carotid arteries showed the flow output from the external and internal carotid artery was higher in microgravity as compared to earth gravity because gravity tends to pull upward-moving blood down. Also, the turbulence kinetic energy and shear stress area changed more in the microgravity condition. This technique can be used to investigate blood flow activity in blood vessels under different conditions and to investigate important health clinical complications.