Pulsatile Aortic Blood Flow—A Critical Assessment of Boundary Conditions

Abstract Patient specific (PS) blood flow studies have become popular in recent years but have thus far had limited clinical impact. This is possibly due to uncertainties and errors in the underlying models and simulations setup. This study focuses on the sensitivity of simulation results due to in- and outflow boundary conditions (BCs). Nine different inlet- and seven different outlet BCs were applied to two variants of a healthy subject's thoracic aorta. Temporal development of the flow is essential for the formation and development of helical/spiraling flow where the commonly observed clockwise helical motion may change direction during the heart-cycle. The sensitivity to temporal and spatial variations in the inlet conditions is significant both when expressed in terms of mean and maximal wall shear stress (WSS) and its different averaged variables, e.g., time-averaged WSS (TAWSS), oscillatory shear index (OSI) and relative residence time (RRT). The simulation results are highly sensitive to BC. For example, the maximal WSS may vary over three-orders of magnitude (1–1000 Pa) depending on particular combinations of BCs. Moreover, certain formulations of outlet BCs may be inconsistent with the computed flow field if the underlying assumptions of the space–time dependence are violated. The results of this study show that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations can reveal flow details that can enhance understanding of blood flows. However, the results also demonstrate the potential difficulties in mimicking blood flow in clinical situations.