Toward Efficient FSI Modeling in Patient-Specific Arteries: SPH Simulation of Blood Flow in Thin Deformable Vessels

Abstract

Accurate simulation of blood flow in deformable vessels is critical in cardiovascular research for understanding disease progression and informing clinical decision-making. However, due to the thin-walled nature of arteries, traditional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) approaches based on full-dimensional volume modeling often require extremely fine particle spacing to ensure numerical convergence for the solid mechanics. This, in turn, leads to redundant resolution in the fluid domain to maintain sufficient kernel support near the fluid-solid interface in fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations. To address this limitation, we propose an efficient reduced-dimensional shell-based SPH method for modeling thin-walled deformable arteries, and conduct FSI for capturing hemodynamics and arterial wall mechanics. Through a series of validation cases, the proposed shell model demonstrates comparable accuracy in fluid dynamics to the volume model, while achieving faster convergence in solid mechanics and reduced computational cost. We further investigate the influence of wall compliance on flow transitions and key hemodynamic indices, highlighting the necessity of FSI modeling over rigid-wall assumptions. Finally, the method is applied to two patient-specific vascular geometries, i.e. the carotid artery and the aorta, which demonstrates its robustness, efficiency and physiological relevance in realistic cardiovascular simulations.