Numerical simulations of the blood flow through vertebral arteries.

Vertebral arteries are two arteries whose structure and location in human body result in development of special flow conditions. For some of the arteries, one can observe a significant difference between flow rates in the left and the right arteries during ultrasonography diagnosis. Usually the reason of such a difference was connected with pathology of the artery in which a smaller flow rate was detected. Simulations of the flow through the selected type of the vertebral artery geometry for twenty five cases of artery diameters have been carried out. The main aim of the presented experiment was to visualize the flow in the region of vertebral arteries junction in the origin of the basilar artery. It is extremely difficult to examine this part of human circulation system, thus numerical experiments may be helpful in understanding the phenomena occurring when two relatively large arteries join together to form one vessel. The obtained results have shown that an individual configuration and diameters of particular arteries can exert an influence on the flow in them and affect a significant difference between flow rates for vertebral arteries. It has been assumed in the investigations that modelled arteries were absolutely normal, without any pathology. In the numerical experiment, the non-Newtonian model of blood was employed. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.