(516p) Computational Fluid Dynamics Investigation Of Blood Flow Through Renal Artery Stenosis

Irregularities in renal artery anatomy may be linked to health problems, such as hypertension. These abnormalities seem to influence malfunctions in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS), which is a hormonal control system that acts to regulate blood pressure in the body. In an experiment conducted in 1934, Goldblatt consistently produced hypertension in dogs by constricting the renal artery with clamps. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) provides a promising means for understanding the influence of abnormal anatomy on blood flow through the human renal artery. The purpose of this research is to ascertain the effect of renal artery structures (e.g. stenosis) on blood pressure. Gambit, a preprocessing program, serves as the graphical user interface for creating the representative geometries and their respective meshes or grids for calculations. The geometries can be imported into the flow modeling software Fluent. Fluent is used to perform calculations necessary to test the representative geometries and provide pressure, velocity, and shear stress data. The density and viscosity of blood are considered constant and are taken to be 1060 kg/m^3 and 4 cp, respectively. Typical renal artery dimensions of 50 mm in length and 4 mm in diameter and blood flow of 600 mL/min are used as the starting point for variations. The influences of renal artery diameter, length, volumetric blood flow rate are under investigation. One case under investigation is the influence of stenosis length, diameter, and axial position on the pressure drop across the artery. Another case of interest is the influence of volumetric flow rate of blood on the pressure drop across a renal artery with stenosis. The results of this research should aid physicians in the prediction and treatment of problems associated with abnormal renal artery physiology.