Large eddy simulation in a rotary blood pump: Viscous shear stress computation and comparison with unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation.

Purpose:: Numerical flow analysis (computational fluid dynamics) in combination with the prediction of blood damage is an important procedure to investigate the hemocompatibility of a blood pump, since blood trauma due to shear stresses remains a problem in these devices. Today, the numerical damage prediction is conducted using unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations. Investigations with large eddy simulations are rarely being performed for blood pumps. Hence, the aim of the study is to examine the viscous shear stresses of a large eddy simulation in a blood pump and compare the results with an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation.

Methods:: The simulations were carried out at two operation points of a blood pump. The flow was simulated on a 100M element mesh for the large eddy simulation and a 20M element mesh for the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation. As a first step, the large eddy simulation was verified by analyzing internal dissipative losses within the pump. Then, the pump characteristics and mean and turbulent viscous shear stresses were compared between the two simulation methods.

Results:: The verification showed that the large eddy simulation is able to reproduce the significant portion of dissipative losses, which is a global indication that the equivalent viscous shear stresses are adequately resolved. The comparison with the unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation revealed that the hydraulic parameters were in agreement, but differences for the shear stresses were found.

Conclusion:: The results show the potential of the large eddy simulation as a high-quality comparative case to check the suitability of a chosen Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes setup and turbulence model. Furthermore, the results lead to suggest that large eddy simulations are superior to unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations when instantaneous stresses are applied for the blood damage prediction.