A. Redaelli et al., THE ASSIGNMENT OF VELOCITY PROFILES IN FINITE-ELEMENT SIMULATIONS OF PULSATILE FLOW IN ARTERIES, Computers in biology and medicine, 27(3), 1997, pp. 233-247
In this paper we present a new method for the assignment of pulsatile
velocity profiles as input boundary conditions in finite element model
s of arteries. The method is based on the implementation of the analyt
ical solution for developed pulsatile flow in a rigid straight tube. T
he analytical solution provides the fluid dynamics of the region upstr
eam from the fluid domain to be investigated by means of the finite el
ement approach. In standard fluid dynamics finite element applications
, the inlet developed velocity profiles are achieved assuming velocity
boundary conditions to be easily implementable-such as flat or parabo
lic velocity profiles-applied to a straight tube of appropriate length
. The tube is attached to the inflow section of the original fluid dom
ain so that the flow can develop fully. The comparison between the ana
lytical solution and the traditional numerical approach indicates that
the analytical solution has some advantages over the numerical one. M
oreover, the results suggest that subroutine employment allows a consi
stent reduction in solving time especially for complex fluid dynamic m
odel, and significantly decreases the storage and memory requirements
for computations. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.