Medical researchers are nowadays relying on simulation tools to assist in
predicting the behaviour of circulatory blood flow inside the human body. Computational simulations can provide invaluable information that is extremely
difficult to be obtained experimentally, and they also allow many variations of
fluid dynamics problems to be parametrically studied. Figs 1.8 and 1.9 illustrate
just one of the many sample applications of CFD in the biomedical area where the
blood flows through original stenosed and virtually stented arteries have been predicted herein. With the breadth of physical models and advances in areas of fluidstructure interaction, particle tracking, turbulence modelling, and better meshing
facilities, rigorous CFD analysis is increasingly performed to study the fluid phenomena inside the human vascular system. Medical simulations of circulatory
functions offer many benefits. They can lower the chances of postoperative complications, assist in developing better surgical procedures, and deliver a good
understanding of biological processes and more efficient and less destructive
medical equipment such as blood pumps. For example, CFD is being increasingly
employed via virtual prototyping to recommend the best design for surgical
reconstructions such as carotid endarterectomy and to better understand the blood
flow through an aneurysm in the abdominal artery.
CFD is also gaining an enormous interest in the pharmaceutical industries.
With the ever-increasing pollution levels causing respiratory problems and
frequent asthma attacks, the need has never been greater to predict and optimize
inhaled therapies. CFD can provide essential insights by simulating the entire
drug delivery process for particulate, aerosol, and gaseous drug types, from the
inception of device design through the airways and down into the lungs of the
pulmonary system. Through sophisticated multiphase models, the motion of
aerosol droplets and drug particles and their transport/deposition characteristics
within the airways are predicted to ascertain the drug concentration in the lungs
as shown by the example exemplifying the modelling of particle formation/
dispersion from nasal sprayers and particle transport/deposition in the nasal
cavity in Fig. 1.10. In order to better emulate the actual fluid flow through
the airways of the bronchial tree of the pulmonary system such as shown in
Fig. 1.11, medical images obtained from accurate CT or MRI scans are converted into a geometrical model, which are subsequently used for advanced
CF