Weakly swirling flow in a model of blood vessel with stenosis: Numerical and experimental study

Investigation of weakly swirling flow in a model of a blood vessel with asymmetrical stenosis has been performed using both experimental flow measurement techniques (ultrasound Doppler) and computational fluid dynamics methods. A special attention is paid to getting data for the length of the reverse-flow zone occurring past the stenosis. It has been established that the laminar steady-state flow model is acceptable for numerical analysis of flow past the given-geometry stenosis at Reynolds number values less than 300. At higher values of this parameter, application of the semi-empirical k-ω SST turbulence model is preferable. It has been shown that flow swirl can lead to an increase of the reverse-flow zone.