Numerical Investigation on the Geometrical Effects of Novel Graft Designs for Peripheral Artery Bypass Surgery

The design of prosthetic grafts plays an essential role on the hemodynamics through the graft anastomosis. Research has shown that swirling flow, which is caused by the rotational compressive pumping of the heart, is a natural phenomenon in the arterial system and results in removing unfavourable flow environment. Recently, non-planar helical grafts have shown to perform better than grafts with internal spiral ridge in inducing the swirling flow. The present work investigates the importance of the ridge design and in particular, shows that the ridge trailing edge orientation at the anastomosis has significant effects in potentially improving the hemodynamic efficiency of this type of graft.