Numerical Simulation of Flow Through Biofluid Devices

Abstract

The results of a numerical simulation of flow through an artificial heart and through an artificial tilting-disk heart valve are presented. The simulation involves solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations; the solution process is described. The details and difficulties of mod eling these particular geometries are discussed. The arti ficial heart geometry uses a single moving grid, and the valve computation uses an overlaid-grid approach with one moving grid and one stationary grid. The equations must be solved iteratively for each discrete time step of the computations, requiring a significant amount of computing time. It is particularly difficult to analyze and present the fluid physics represented by these calcula tions because of the time-varying nature of the flow, and because the flows are internal. The use of three- dimensional graphics and scientific visualization tech niques have become instrumental in solving these problems.