Concentrated High Wall Shear Stress due to the Three-Dimensional Configuration of the Aortic Arch and Development of the Aortic Aneurysm

Abstract

It has been suggested that the development of aneurysms in the thoracic aorta is closely related to the torsion of the aortic arch. In this study, we analyzed flow in aortic arch models with various torsions using computational fluid dynamics simulation. The correlation between the aneurysm of the thoracic aorta and distortion of the arch was investigated from a fluid dynamics point of view. It was observed that the global feature of the secondary flow pattern, and the wall shear stress (WSS) distribution did not depend on the torsion of the arch from the qualitative viewpoint. However, the quantitative value of WSS appeared to be affected by the torsion. It was shown that WSS tends to increase when the torsion of the aortic arch increases. This result suggests that distortion of the aortic arch strongly influences WSS distribution, which is suspected to be related to the development of vascular diseases.