Pulsatile flow in bifurcation with aneurysm using µPTV technique

Abstract

An important topic in biomechanical flow is the study of aneurysms. Aneurysm can be found in bifurcation and curved blood vessels. These can rupture leading to life threatening situations.

In this thesis we will look at bifurcation etched in silicon. The experiments consist of a visualisation study and a more detailed study using particle tracking velocimetry. The visualisation was done for four different bifurcations with and without aneurysm. This was done over a wide range of Reynolds number most likely including realistic flow rate for this bifurcation. In the tracking study we focused on one specific bifurcation with both stationary and pulsatile flow.

This thesis also include a general overview of particle image velocimetry and particle tracking velocimetry with some special consideration to flow in micro scale. Experimental data usually contains noise. To address this we will look at numerical methods that can be used to ensemble average a non uniform vector field. This includes binning methods like SAT-PTV and Moving least squares (Local polynomial regression).