FSI analysis of the blood flow and geometrical characteristics in the thoracic aorta

We present a fluid–structure interaction (FSI) analysis of the blood flow and geometrical characteristics in the thoracic aorta. The FSI is handled with the sequentially-coupled arterial FSI technique. The fluid mechanics equations are solved with the ST-VMS method, which is the variational multiscale version of the deforming-spatial-domain/stabilized space–time (DSD/SST) method. We focus on the relationship between the centerline geometry of the aorta and the flow field, which influences the wall shear stress distribution. The centerlines of the aorta models we use in our analysis are extracted from the CT scans, and we assume a constant diameter. Torsion-free model geometries are generated by projecting the original centerline to its averaged plane of curvature. The flow fields for the original and projected geometries are compared to examine the influence of the torsion.