The arterial branch from abdominal aorta to renal artery is reported to be one of the prediction sites of atherosclerosis, which can either block up the blood flow into the kidney, or, result in the formation and the break-down of rental thrombosis. Quantitative prediction of the relationship between hemodynamics and rental diseases is therefore of great importance and it is thought that anatomic geometry of the rental arterial branch may play a key role in the set-on and the development of rental atherosclerosis. A numerical analysis has been conducted for the rental arterial hemodynamics. We constructed a realistic geometric model for the rental arterial branch based on CT image data, using an integrated method combining an automatic shape-extracting method and an automatic grid-generation method. A recently developed in house NS solver was employed, that includes the multi-block method, the overset grid method, and the one-dimensional modeling method for arterial tree which can provide realistic physiological boundary conditions. Results are presented of velocity vectors and wall shear stresses at the rental arterial branch, which points to a close relationship between the fluid dynamic structures and the rental atherosclerosis.
