Abstract
Atherosclerotic disease of the coronary arteries and the large vessels is the leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Early atherosclerotic lesions are more frequently found in regions of arterial branching and curvature where the flow field is “disturbed” [1]. This has long motivated the notion that arterial fluid mechanics may act as a localizing factor for early atherosclerotic lesions [2]. Despite intense study over the past three decades, the precise role of hemodynamics in atherogenesis remains to be elucidated. Furthermore, the sensitivity of arterial flow fields to changes in specific flow and geometric parameters remains incompletely understood. The objective of the current study is to investigate the impact of a range of physiologically-relevant fluid mechanical parameters on the flow field within the rabbit abdominal aorta in the vicinity of the celiac artery. This is accomplished using experimentally-validated finite volume numerical techniques. The rabbit was selected because we have previously studied both the flow field in the rabbit aorta [3,4] and the topography of sites of enhanced permeability thought to play a role in atherogenesis [5].
