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Patient-specific aortic geometry and its influence on the flow in the vicinity of Transcatheter Aortic Valve (TAV) has been highlighted in numerous studies using both in silico and in vitro experiments. However, there has not yet been a detailed Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) experiment conducted to quantify the relationship between the geometry, flow downstream of TAV, and the flow in the sinus and the neo-sinus. We tested six different patient-specific aorta models with a 26-mm SAPIEN 3 valve (Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine, CA, USA) in a left heart simulator with coronary flow. Velocities in all three cusps and circulation downstream of TAV were computed to evaluate the influence of the ascending aorta curvature on the flow field. The in vitro analysis showed that the patient-specific aortic curvature had positive correlation to the circulation in the ascending aorta (p = 0.036) and circulation had negative correlation to the particle washout time in the cusps (p = 0.011). These results showed that distinct vortical flow patterns in the ascending aorta as the main jet impinges on the aortic wall causes a recirculation region that facilitates the flow back into the sinus and the neo-sinus, thus reducing the risk of flow stagnation and washout time.

Re-entrant jet causes cloud cavitation shedding, and cavitating vortical flow results in flow field instability. In the present work, a method of water injection is proposed to hinder re-entrant jet and suppress vortex in cloud cavitating flow of a NACA66 (MOD) hydrofoil (Re = 5.1 × 105, σ = 0.83). A combination of filter-based density corrected turbulence model (FBDCM) with the Zwart–Gerber–Belamri cavitation model (ZGB) is adopted to obtain the transient flow characteristics while vortex structures are identified by Q criterion & λ2 criterion. Results demonstrate that the injected water flow reduces the range of the low-pressure zone below 1940 Pa on the suction surface by 54.76%. Vortex structures are observed both inside the attached and shedding cavitation, and the water injection shrinks the vortex region. The water injection successfully blocks the re-entrant jet by generating a favorable pressure gradient (FPG) and effectively weakens the re-entrant jet intensity by 46.98%. The water injection shrinks the vortex distribution area near the hydrofoil suction surface, which makes the flow in the boundary layer more stable. From an energy transfer perspective, the water injection supplies energy to the near-wall flow, and hence keeps the steadiness of the flow field.

Navigating efficiently across vortical flow fields presents a significant challenge in various robotic applications. The dynamic and unsteady nature of vortical flows often disturbs the control of underwater robots, complicating their operation in hydrodynamic environments. Conventional control methods, which depend on accurate modeling, fail in these settings due to the complexity of fluid-structure interactions (FSI) caused by unsteady hydrodynamics. This study proposes a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm, trained in a data-driven manner, to enable efficient navigation of a robotic fish swimming across vortical flows. Our proposed algorithm incorporates the LSTM architecture and uses several recent consecutive observations as the state to address the issue of partial observation, often due to sensor limitations. We present a numerical study of navigation within a Kármán vortex street created by placing a stationary cylinder in a uniform flow, utilizing the immersed boundary-lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM). The aim is to train the robotic fish to discover efficient navigation policies, enabling it to reach a designated target point across the Kármán vortex street from various initial positions. After training, the fish demonstrates the ability to rapidly reach the target from different initial positions, showcasing the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed algorithm. Analysis of the results reveals that the robotic fish can leverage velocity gains and pressure differences induced by the vortices to reach the target, underscoring the potential of our proposed algorithm in enhancing navigation in complex hydrodynamic environments.

This paper presents a two-stenosis aorta model mimicking vortical flow in vascular aneurysms. More specifically, we propose to virtually induce two adjacent stenoses in the abdominal aorta to develop various vortical flow zones post stenoses. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted for the virtual two-stenosis model based on physiological and anatomical data (i.e., diameters, flow rate waveforms) from adult rabbits. The virtual model includes adult rabbits' infra-renal portion of the aorta and iliac arteries. 3D CFD simulations in five different dual-stenosis configurations were performed using a commercial CFD package (FLUENT). In-house software assessed the evolution of flow vortices. Notably, spatial-temporally averaged wall shear stress (STA-WSS) and oscillatory shear index (OSI), the total volume of vortex flow, the number of vortices, and the phase-to-phase overlap of vortex flow within each region were evaluated. In all models, we found consistent patterns of the vortex flow parameters, indicating that the adjacent stenoses induced three different hemodynamic zones, namely, stable vortical flow (after the first stenosis), transient vortical flow (after the second stenosis), and unstable vortical flow (further distal to the second stenosis). Also, different degrees of flow disturbance can be achieved in these three zones. It is significant to note that, although the 'dual-stenosis' geometry is completely hypothetical, it allows us to create various vortical flows in consecutive vessel segments for the first time. As a result, if implemented as a pre-clinical model, the proposed two-stenosis model offers an attractive, tunable environment to investigate the interplays between subject-specific hemodynamics and vascular remodeling. This aspect remains in our future directions. Graphical Abstract

In hydro turbines, the draft tube vortex rope is one of the most crucial impact factors causing pressure pulsation and vibration. It is affected by operating conditions due to differences in the flow rate and state and can be symmetric or asymmetric along the rotational direction. It may influence the stability of draft tube flow. To achieve a better understanding, in this work, dynamic mode decomposition is used in a draft tube case study of a simplification of a vortex rope. As the flow rate increases, the shape of the vortex rope becomes clear, and the flow rotation becomes more significant as the inlet flow rate increases. Dynamic mode decomposition was used to determine the relative frequencies, which were 0 (averaged), 0.7 times, and 1.4 times the features of the reference frequency. As the inlet flow rate increases, the order of high-energy modes and their influence on the vortex rope gradually increase, and this characteristic is exhibited further downstream of the draft tube. When the inlet flow rate is low, the impact of mode noise is greater. As the flow velocity increases, the noise weakens and the rotation mode becomes more apparent. Identifying the mode of the vortex flow helps extract characteristics of the vortex rope flow under different operating conditions, providing a richer data-driven basis for an in-depth analysis of the impact of operating conditions on the flow stability of a draft tube.

Aberrations in flow in the cerebral venous outflow tract (CVOT) have been implicated as the cause of several pathologic conditions including idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), multiple sclerosis (MS), and pulsatile tinnitus (PT). The advent of 4D flow magnetic resonance imaging (4D-flow MRI) has recently allowed researchers to evaluate blood flow patterns in the arterial structures with great success. We utilized similar imaging techniques and found several distinct flow characteristics in the CVOT of subjects with and without lumenal irregularities. We present the flow patterns of 8 out of 38 subjects who have varying heights of the internal jugular bulb and varying lumenal irregularities including stenosis and diverticulum. In the internal jugular vein (IJV) with an elevated jugular bulb (JB), 4Dflow MRI revealed a characteristic spiral flow that was dependent on the level of JB elevation. Vortical flow was also observed in the diverticula of the venous sinuses and IJV. The diversity of flow complexity in the CVOT illustrates the potential importance of hemodynamic investigations in elucidating venous pathologies.

Parcel Eulerian-Lagrangian Hamiltonian formulations have recently been used in structure-preserving numerical schemes, asymptotic calculations and in alternative explanations of fluid parcel (in)stabilities. A parcel formulation describes the dynamics of one fluid parcel with a Lagrangian kinetic energy but an Eulerian potential evaluated at the parcel's position. In this paper, we derive the geometric link between the parcel Eulerian-Lagrangian formulation and well-known variational and Hamiltonian formulations for three models of ideal and geophysical fluid flow: generalized two-dimensional vorticity-stream function dynamics, the rotating two-dimensional shallow-water equations and the rotating three-dimensional compressible Euler equations.

The initiation of leading-edge-vortex formation in unsteady airfoil flows is governed by flow criticality at the leading edge. While earlier works demonstrated the promise of criticality of leading-edge suction in governing LEV shedding, this criterion is airfoil and Reynolds number dependent. In this work, by examining results from Navier–Stokes computations for a large set of pitching airfoil cases at laminar flow conditions, we show that the onset of flow reversal at the leading edge always corresponds to the boundary-layer shape factor reaching the same critical value that governs laminar flow separation in steady airfoil flows. Further, we show that low-order prediction of this boundary-layer criticality is possible with an integral-boundary-layer calculation performed using potential-flow velocity distributions from an unsteady panel method. The low-order predictions agree well with the high-order computational results with a single empirical offset that is shown to work for multiple airfoils. This work shows that boundary-layer criticality governs LEV initiation, and that a low-order prediction approach is capable of predicting this boundary-layer criticality and LEV initiation.

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is one of the causes of pulmonary hypertension (PH) and requires invasive measurement of the mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) during right heart catheterisation (RHC) for the diagnosis. 4D flow MRI could provide non-invasive parameters to estimate the mPAP. Twenty-five patients with suspected CTEPH underwent cardiac MRI. Mean vortex duration (%), pulmonary distensibility, right ventricular volumes and function were measured using 4D flow MRI and cine sequences, and compared with the mPAP measured by RHC. The mPAP measured during RHC was 33 ± 16 mmHg (10–66 mmHg). PH (defined as mPAP > 20 mmHg) was present in 19 of 25 patients (76%). A vortical flow was observed in all but two patients (92%) on 4D flow images, and vortex duration showed good correlation with the mPAP (r = 0.805; p < 0.0001). Youden index analysis showed that a vortex duration of 8.6% of the cardiac cycle provided a 95% sensitivity and an 83% specificity to detect PH. Reliability for the measurement of vortex duration was excellent for both intra-observer ICC = 0.823 and inter-observer ICC = 0.788. Vortex duration could be a useful parameter to non-invasively estimate mPAP in patients with suspected CTEPH.

To ensure the long-term reliability of tidal stream turbines, waves and currents must be considered during the design phase. In this paper, a three-bladed horizontal axis turbine with a diameter of 0.9 m was used as the baseline model. OpenFOAM, an open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) library platform, was used to predict the performance of a horizontal axis tidal stream turbine (HATST) under waves and currents. A mesh dependency test was carried out to select the optimal mesh to capture the flow’s features. As a validation study, the power of the turbine under only the current was predicted and was found to be consistent with the experimental results. The generated wave profile under a current was compared with the results obtained using the third-order Stokes wave theory. The performance of the HATST was predicted for various wave frequencies and heights and compared with experimental data. The effect of the wave height on the power performance was greater than the wave frequency. Vortical flow structures behind the turbine were investigated for various wave conditions. The generated tip vortices propagated upward and downward at wave crest and trough conditions, respectively.