Numerical simulation of blood flow in large vessels during thrombus formation

The thrombus formation in vessels is a very complex cascade process that is, amongst many other factors, dependent on the local blood flow characteristics. With the progressing formation, the geometry, and with it the flow pattern changes continuously. In addition to this, the adhesion, activation, and aggregation of the thrombocytes are heavily influenced by certain properties of the flow, most importantly by the emerging local shear forces. In the current work, the formation of a thrombus has been simulated using a simplified model of blood coagulation inside an artificial vessel section. While the employed blood coagulation model has heavily reduced the number of degrees of freedom compared to the real in-vivo bio-chemical processes, it is still capable of successfully reproducing several vital properties of a thrombus qualitatively. DOI: 10.17489/biohun/2013/1/2