Choice of boundary condition for lattice-Boltzmann simulation of moderate-Reynolds-number flow in complex domains.

Modeling blood flow in larger vessels using lattice-Boltzmann methods comes with a challenging set of constraints: a complex geometry with walls and inlets and outlets at arbitrary orientations with respect to the lattice, intermediate Reynolds (Re) number, and unsteady flow. Simple bounce-back is one of the most commonly used, simplest, and most computationally efficient boundary conditions, but many others have been proposed. We implement three other methods applicable to complex geometries [Guo, Zheng, and Shi, Phys. Fluids 14, 2007 (2002); Bouzidi, Firdaouss, and Lallemand, Phys. Fluids 13, 3452 (2001); Junk and Yang, Phys. Rev. E 72, 066701 (2005)] in our open-source application hemelb. We use these to simulate Poiseuille and Womersley flows in a cylindrical pipe with an arbitrary orientation at physiologically relevant Re number (1-300) and Womersley (4-12) numbers and steady flow in a curved pipe at relevant Dean number (100-200) and compare the accuracy to analytical solutions. We find that both the Bouzidi-Firdaouss-Lallemand (BFL) and Guo-Zheng-Shi (GZS) methods give second-order convergence in space while simple bounce-back degrades to first order. The BFL method appears to perform better than GZS in unsteady flows and is significantly less computationally expensive. The Junk-Yang method shows poor stability at larger Re number and so cannot be recommended here. The choice of collision operator (lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook vs multiple relaxation time) and velocity set (D3Q15 vs D3Q19 vs D3Q27) does not significantly affect the accuracy in the problems studied.

Impact of blood rheology on wall shear stress in a model of the middle cerebral artery.

Perturbations to the homeostatic distribution of mechanical forces exerted by blood on the endothelial layer have been correlated with vascular pathologies, including intracranial aneurysms and atherosclerosis. Recent computational work suggests that, in order to correctly characterize such forces, the shear-thinning properties of blood must be taken into account. To the best of our knowledge, these findings have never been compared against experimentally observed pathological thresholds. In this work, we apply the three-band diagram (TBD) analysis due to Gizzi et al. (Gizzi et al. 2011 Three-band decomposition analysis of wall shear stress in pulsatile flows. Phys. Rev. E 83, 031902. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.83.031902)) to assess the impact of the choice of blood rheology model on a computational model of the right middle cerebral artery. Our results show that, in the model under study, the differences between the wall shear stress predicted by a Newtonian model and the well-known Carreau-Yasuda generalized Newtonian model are only significant if the vascular pathology under study is associated with a pathological threshold in the range 0.94-1.56 Pa, where the results of the TBD analysis of the rheology models considered differs. Otherwise, we observe no significant differences.