Computational Fluid-Structure Interaction of Polyurethane-based Vascular Graft

This work described the numerical fluid-structure interaction of the polyurethane-based vascular graft and the femoral artery results. Polyurethanes were synthetized from a mixture of polyethylene glycol (PEG), polycaprolactone diol (PCL) and Pentaerythritol (PE). Blood was modeled as a laminar, incompressible, non-Newtonian, and isothermal flow. In contrast, each conduit's wall mechanics was modeled through a hyperelastic constitutive model assuming isotropic, homogenous, and incompressible material. Sinusoidal blood pressure was applied to study the velocity, von Mises stress, total displacement, and shear stress of each vessel. The data suggested that PU-based grafts with a composition of 45-45-10 and 46.3-46.3-7.5 PEG/PCL/PE could enhance the compliance response and reduced the mechanical mismatch between the native blood vessel and the prosthesis. However, further analysis with more complex geometries should be addressed to identify flow disturbance and the stress distribution at the anastomosis site.