Abstract
Wall shear rate or stress is believed to be a major hemodynamic variable influencing atherosclerosis and artery-graft anastomic intimal hyperplasia. The purpose of this study is to verify the effects of radial wall motion, artery-graft compliance and diameter mismatch, and impedance phase angle on the wall shear rate distribution near an end-to-end artery-graft anastomosis model. The results show that radial wall motion of the elastic artery model lowers the mean wall shear rates under pulsatile flow condition by 15 to 20 % comparing to those under steady flow condition at the same mean flow rate. Impedance phase angle seems to have small effects on the mean and amplitude of the wall shear rate distribution. In order to study the effects of compliance and diameter mismatch on the wall shear rates, two models are studied-Model I has 6% and Model I has 6% and Model II has 11% smaller graft diameter. Divergent geometry caused by diameter mismatch near the distal sites reduces the mean wall shear rates significantly, and this low shear region is believed to be prone to intimal hyperplasia.