The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) was proposed in the 1980s, on the basis of a lattice gas and the discretization of the Boltzmann transport equation. It has been used to represent the blood flow due to its ability to simulate computational fluid dynamics governed by the Navier-Stokes equations and to represent complex geometries and multiphase turbulent flows. With the need to create good physical and mathematical models to represent the human cardiovascular system (HCVS), one must know the physical laws governing the flow of blood through the veins or arteries of the human body. The objective of this paper is to present the entire process of building an idealized model to represent the blood flow in arteries, considering a Newtonian, viscous, laminar and pulsatile fluid. The pulse is defined as suggested by Womersley in his article of 1955 and subsequently reproduced using various numerical methods by other authors. A representative application to a portion of the femoral artery illustrates the procedure, and the results are compared with the medical literature. The proposed model for the idealized pulsatile blood flow generated satisfactory results from a qualitative point of view.
Keywords:
lattice Boltzmann method; pulsatile flow; blood; arteries
