Experimental Investigation of Branch Flow Ratio, Angle, and Reynolds Number Effects on the Pressure and Flow Fields in Arterial Branch Models

An experimental investigation was carried out to acquire an understanding of local pressure changes and flow along the main lumen of arterial branch models similar to the femoral artery of man with three different branch angles (30, 60, and 90 deg) and side branch to the main lumen diameter ratio of 0.4. Effects of branch to main lumen flow rate ratios and physiological Reynolds numbers were found to be significant on the local pressure changes, while that of branch angle was also found to be important. The flow visualization study revealed that the flow separated in the main lumen near the branch junction when the pressure rise coefficient along the main lumen was above a critical value (i.e., 0.35 ∼ 0.46), which was observed to be a function of the Reynolds number. The critical value of the branch to main lumen flow rate ratio was found to be about 0.38 ∼ 0.44 also depending on the Reynolds number. Time averaged pressure distributions for pulsatile flow were similar in trend to steady flow values although they differed somewhat in detail in the main lumen in the branch region.