Verification Benchmarks to Assess the Implementation of Computational Fluid Dynamics Based Hemolysis Prediction...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
• Medical Device Evaluation

Background:

• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is increasingly used for medical device evaluation.
• Accurate prediction of blood damage (hemolysis) is critical for device safety.
• Standardized verification and validation (V&V) methods for CFD hemolysis models are needed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop idealized flow-based verification benchmarks for power-law based hemolysis models in CFD.
• To assess the implementation accuracy of Eulerian and Lagrangian hemolysis models.
• To provide standard benchmarks for verifying blood damage predictive models in CFD codes.

Main Methods:

• Obtained analytical solutions for Eulerian power-law blood damage models in Couette and pipe flow.
• Performed CFD simulations using Eulerian and Lagrangian hemolysis models.
• Compared CFD results with analytical solutions for fluid flow and hemolysis index (HI).

Main Results:

• Eulerian-based CFD simulations matched analytical solutions within ~1%.
• Lagrangian models agreed with Eulerian results within 5% in the absence of flow acceleration.
• Differences between Lagrangian and Eulerian models increased to ~10% with flow acceleration and >100% with decreasing beta exponent.

Conclusions:

• The developed benchmarks successfully verify Eulerian hemolysis model implementation in CFD.
• Agreement between Lagrangian and Eulerian models is dependent on power-law constants and flow conditions.
• These benchmarks are essential for verifying CFD blood damage models, but experimental validation is still required for device safety evaluations.