Kristen Karman

2-D CFD Design of the Cross-Sectional Shape of Arterial Stents

A Thesis Presented for the Master of Science in Computational Engineering Degree, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Kristen Catherine Karman, December 2013

Abstract:
An approach for designing arterial stents to maximize wall shear stress is presented. A cost equation to maximize wall shear stress is derived and then inverted into a minimization problem for the optimizer. A 2-D mixed-element, finite-volume scheme for solving the compressible Navier-Stokes equations is implemented. A parameterization of the cross-sectional shape of the stent wire using Hicks-Henne functions is described. The strategies used in the commercial optimization software, DAKOTA, to minimize the cost equation are described. The solver is validated using well known fluid flow test cases and is shown to match other published computed results for blood flow through stented arteries. New candidate stent shapes are produced by the optimization and are evaluated based on comparison to modern commercial stent designs.

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