Abstract
The number of adult patients who had an arterial switch operation has been increasing. In general, the postoperative thoracic aorta has abnormal curvature and torsion at the beginning of the ascending aorta due to geometric interferences with the pulmonary artery.Consequently, it is predicted that blood flow in the postoperative aorta becomes more complicated. However, there are few studies on blood flow field in the postoperative aorta, so CFD analysis is necessary for the better understanding. In this research, blood flow in the normal thoracic aorta and the postoperative aorta is simulated by use of incompressible Navier-Stokes equation. Each thoracic aortic model is made by medical image data, and virtual flux method is applied to calculate blood flow on Cartesian grid. It is found that secondary flows in the postoperative model are more complicated than that in the normal model. In addition, it is observed that maximal value of wall shear stress for the postoperative model is higher than that for the normal model.
