Picture 1: Mr. Evan Frantz, Cradle North America, Former CFD Application Engineer.
Imagine you are a doctor. You have just received the results for your latest patient, and it appears that she has a cerebral aneurysm! From your previous experience, you can typically assess the severity of the aneurysm, however this one is not quite as clear. You may be concerned that when you perform the operation complications may occur and burden the patient. However, with rupture of the aneurysm a possibility, not conducting a surgery isn’t an option. What if there was a tool that could give you more (or supplemental) information to help you determine whether the operation is necessary?
Overview
Researchers may be turned away from using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to study aneurysms because of their unfamiliarity with the software, or simply a lack of time. Cradle answers these concerns by implementing a custom, easy-to-use interface to semi-automatically run patient specific simulations, either individually or with batch processing. Users can observe the difference in local pressure elevation and wall shear stress, under steady-state flow conditions without needing any advanced knowledge of CFD, such as mesh generation. The results are displayed using our simplized post processor and can be shared for free using CradleViewer.
Figure 1: 3D images of Cerebral Anuerysm in CAD, Mesh, and CFD result model respectively.
Features
Figure 2: User interface of Automation for CFD anuerysm analysis.
Simple User Interface
Easy Post Processing
- Defining flow parameters, running simulations, and viewing results, are all streamlined
- Run individual simulations in minutes, or queue multiple simulations for automatic batch processing overnight
- Specific mesh and boundary conditions for each simulation ensure reliable results
Easy Post Processing
- View, save, and distribute simulation results in 3D
- Surface Pressure Distribution
- Wall Shear Stress Distribution
- Mesh Resolution
Process of running a simulation
1
Load geometry
.stl files are automatically scaled to mm and modified to fill inflow and outflow holes
2
Identify inlet and outlet regions
Any number of inlets and outlets can be registered, allowing for unlimited blood vessels to be analyzed
3
Specify flow conditions
Easily apply flow conditions for each inlet and outlet, Either pressure inlet and outlet, or pressure inlet and mass flow rate conditions can be applied depending on your available resources
4
Choose mesh settings
Meshing parameters are automatically determined for each model based off from the smallest diameter
5
Run simulation
Cradle’s pressure based solver obtains final results in minutes
6
Obtain results
View wall shear stress, and surface pressure contour, Distribute results to anyone for free using CradleViewer