Shear stress evaluation on blood cells using computational fluid dynamics

BACKGROUND: Thrombus formation and hemolysis are important factors in developing blood pumps and mechanical heart valve prostheses. These phenomena are induced by flow properties. High shear stress induces platelet and red cell damage Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis calculates shear stress of fluid and particle pathlines of blood cells. OBJECTIVE: We studied blood cell damage in a blood pump by using CFD analysis and proposed a method for estimating blood damage. METHODS: We analyzed a pulsatile blood pump that was developed as a totally implantable left ventricular assist system at Tokai University. Shear stress on blood cells throughout pulsatile blood pumps were analyzed using CFD software. RESULTS: Based on the assumption that the effect of shear stress on platelets is accumulated along the trace, we proposed a method for estimating blood damage using the damage parameter D. Platelet damage parameter is calculated regardless of the division time Delta t which is dependent on the calculation time step. The results of the simulations are in good agreement with Giersiepen's equation obtained from the experiments. CONCLUSION: The history of shear stress on a particle was calculated using CFD analysis. The new damage parameter D yields a value close to that of Giersiepen's equation with small errors.