Selection and validation of a turbulence model for the numerical simulation of the flow at hemodialysis cannulas

Abstract

In recent years, CFD has become an increasingly used tool in the design of blood-based devices. Particularly, the estimation of red blood cell damage (hemolysis) becomes an important challenge to CFD scientists since the blood is a complex fluid present in turbulent regime in most pumping devices. Moreover, previous CFD studies on blood hemolysis lack of reliable relationships between hydraulic results and hematological responses. The objective of this work is to foresee a methodology for performing realistic CFD simulations that lead to reliable hydraulic and hematological correspondence. Cannulae geometries were studied to numerically assess a relatively simple flow with documented hematological data. For the turbulence modeling, a direct numerical simulation (DNS) for a coaxial jet array was used as a benchmark for the selection of an appropriate turbulence model, since the Cannulae approximates the coaxial jet features. Velocity and stress time-averaged profiles were compared between DNS results and the turbulence models. These results, pointed to the Shear Stress Transport with Gamma Theta correlation for transition model as the optimum turbulence model in that geometry. Accurate and reliable hydrodynamic CFD results were obtained for the Cannulae as a previous step to further hematological calculations with a minimum degree of uncertainty