Reverse engineering in the construction of numerical simulation oriented patient-specific model of stented aortic arch aneurysm

Abstract

Patient-specific models are widely used in hemodynamic simulations. The flow in the boundary layer changes so strongly that fine meshes in the boundary layer are required in numerical simulations, especially for the calculation of wall shear stress and its gradient. To precisely analyze hemodynamics, it is necessary to investigate the approaches to the reconstruction of a numerical simulation-oriented patient-specific model for aortic arch aneurysm that can perform particular meshing in the boundary layer. Based on a surface model of aortic arch aneurysm in STL format, reverse engineering concept was applied to reconstruct a solid model using CAD software Geomagic and Pro/E, and a simplified model of stent for the intervention of aortic arch aneurysm was also created. After these models were imported to ANSYS, a block modeling approach was employed to divide the whole model into several domain blocks to adopt different meshing strategies. Particular meshing was performed especially in the boundary layer and around the stents. The finite element model particularly suitable for numerical simulation of hemodynamics was obtained. Hemodynamic simulation was performed, using the constructed finite element model to verify its applicability. The results indicate that reverse engineering concept and the proposed block modeling approach can be used to divide the solid model of aortic arch aneurysm into multiple volumes, which can be meshed according to particular requirements in each volume; the finite element model of stented aortic arch aneurysm can be employed to simulate hemodynamics. The approaches of modeling were applicable not only for aortic arch aneurysm, but also for similar model reconstruction as a reference in hemodynamic simulation investigations.