Tech Briefs

Simulation of Blood Flow through an Aneurysm

A new meshing feature is present in ADINA 8.1 that enables the user to create a volume mesh from a collection of surface elements making up a closed volume. This is achieved without modifying the surface mesh. This feature is useful when a model is only represented by its external surface data (e.g., data from coordinate measuring machines, or CT scans). There are many potential applications, especially in the automotive and biomedical fields.

The example presented above depicts the blood flow through an abdominal aortic aneurysm (a disease where a blood vessel, the aorta in this case, expands to more than twice its normal diameter). The fluid mesh was created from a surface mesh of the blood vessel using this new meshing feature. The animation shows the velocity variation at different sections along the aneurysm.