Numerical simulation of the aortic arch behavior

Pressoreceptor reflex or baroreflex is an automatic control mechanism of the cardiovascular system that helps keep homeostasis or maintain blood pressure at a constant level. It is crucial to consider viscoelastic aortic arterial behavior in the pulse wave blood flow to determine the exact distributed location of the aortic arch pressoreceptors. This chapter presents a three-dimensional (3D) healthy man computer tomography model of the aortic arch. Computational Fluid Dynamic and Fluid-Structure Interaction methods were used to obtain the velocity-pressure field in the fluid domain and the stress-strain distribution in the solid domain. We found an increase in the pressure and velocity of the fluid in the aortic arch domain with a maximum of 14.9kPa and 1.4m/s in the systole, respectively. Endothelial cells in the artery wall concave located at the junctures of the supraaortic branches sense the wall shear stress with a value of 20Pa in the systole. Deformation in the aortic artery wall convex reaches over 1mm. The highest normal stress at the supraaortic branches root when sensed through the adventitia layer pressoreceptor is 188kPa. Increasing age of a person leads to an increase in the elastic modulus and adds to the amount of normal stress in the pressoreceptor.