Simulation of Arterial Blood Flow with the Lattice Boltzmann Method

Lattice Boltzmann method is widely used to solve fluid mechanical problems in engineering applications. For the cardiovascular domain we extended this approach to support elastic walls as boundary conditions in order to simulate blood flow in elastic vessels. The flow is calculated in two and three spatial dimensions revealing characteristic flow patterns and geometrical changes of the arterial vessel walls for different time dependent input contours of pressure and flow. The results of these models are compared to the predictions of well established models, which are based on the work of Womersley and are widely used in blood flow simulation.