Simulation of flow in an exact replica of a diseased human carotid artery

We report on results of ongoing efforts directed towards the development of a computational model for flow in diseased human carotid arteries. Recent visualizations of the flow in an exact replica of an actual diseased artery have revealed the presence of complex, three-dimensional flow structures characterized by multiple recirculation zones and the formation of unstable jets in both the internal and external arteries. Even though the flow conditions at inlet to the artery were kept steady, the experiments showed that the resulting flow downstream of the inlet was unsteady and chaotic. The present computations aim to determine whether such behavior can be captured with a practical finite-volume computational model, and to examine the impact of spatial and temporal resolution on the quality of simulations.