Mina Mohseni, Nastaran Mehboudi, Masood Abdollahi, Amir Shamloo, and Reza Naghdabadi
Plaque rupture, Common carotid artery, Atherosclerotic plaque, Fluid structure interaction
The main goal of this study is to investigate the effects of plaque structure on its stress distribution. Rupture of plaque causes cerebrovascular diseases which lead to high mortality rates all over the world. Computers are powerful tools to understand the mechanism of plaque rupture. In this study, 3D fluid structure interaction simulation is constructed in ABAQUS 6.13 to clarify the relation between stress distribution of plaque and its structure. A model of common carotid artery with distributed stenosis was chosen for the simulation. To investigate the effects of plaque structure on stress distribution, thickness of fibrous cap and lipid core size were varied in the stenosis. Furthermore material properties of plaque were changed to study their effects on stress distribution. The models were simulated under pulsatile flow during the heart cycle and the stress distribution, maximum plaque wall stress and the flow shear rates were analyzed. The results of this study show that the viscoelastic properties of the plaque and the vessel wall reduces flow shear rate. Moreover it was shown that the thickness of fibrous cap is a more important parameter than lipid core size and the maximum plaque wall stress is more dependent to fibrous cap thickness rather than the lipid core size.
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