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Engineering design of artificial vascular junctions for 3D printing

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-06-21, 12:55 authored by Xiaoxiao Han, Richard Bibb, Russell A. Harris
Vascular vessels, including arteries, veins and capillaries, are being printed using additive manufacturing technologies, also known as 3D printing. This paper demonstrates that it is important to follow the vascular design by nature as close as possible when 3D printing artificial vascular branches. In previous work, the authors developed an algorithm of computational geometry for constructing smooth junctions for 3D printing. In this work, computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) is used to compare the wall shear stress and blood velocity field for the junctions of different designs. The CFD model can reproduce the expected wall shear stress at locations remote from the junction. For large vessels such as veins, it is shown that ensuring the smoothness of the junction and using smaller joining angles as observed in nature is very important to avoid high wall shear stress and recirculation. The issue is however less significant for capillaries. Large joining angles make no difference to the hemodynamic behavior, which is also consistent with the fact that most capillary junctions have large joining angles. The combination of the CFD analysis and the junction construction method form a complete design method for artificial vascular vessels that can be 3D printed using additive manufacturing technologies.

Funding

This work was financially supported by the Eur opean Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/ 2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 263416 (ArtiVasc 3D).

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Biofabrication

Volume

8

Issue

2

Citation

HAN, X., BIBB, R.J. and HARRIS, R.A., 2016. Engineering design of artificial vascular junctions for 3D printing. Biofabrication, 8 (2), 025018.

Publisher

© IOP Publishing

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Biofabrication. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1758-5090/8/2/025018

Acceptance date

2016-06-03

Publication date

2016-06-20

ISSN

1758-5082

eISSN

1758-5090

Language

  • en

Article number

025018

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