Both clinical and post mortem studies indicate that, in humans, the carotid sinus of the carotid artery bifurcation is one of the favored sites for the genesis and development of atherosclerotic lesions. Hemodynamic factors have been suggested to be important in atherogenesis. To understand the correlation between atherogenesis and fluid dynamics in the carotid sinus, the blood flow in artery was simulated numerically. In those studies, the property of blood was treated as an incompressible, Newtonian fluid. In fact, however, the blood is a complicated non-Newtonian fluid with shear thinning and viscoelastic properties, especially when the shear rate is low. A variety of non-Newtonian models have been applied in the numerical studies. Among them, the Casson equation was widely used. However, the Casson equation agrees well only when the shear rate is less than 10 s-1. The flow field of the carotid bifurcation usually covers a wide range of shear rate. We therefore believe that it may not be sufficient to describe the property of blood only using the Casson equation in the whole flow field of the carotid bifurcation. In the present study, three different blood constitutive models, namely, the Newtonian, the Casson and the hybrid fluid constitutive models were used in the flow simulation of the human carotid bifurcation. The results were compared among the three models. The results showed that the Newtonian model and the hybrid model had verysimilar distributions of the axial velocity, secondary flow and wall shear stress, but the Casson model resulted in significant differences in these distributions from the other two models. This study suggests that it is not appropriate to only use the Casson equation to simulate the whole flow field of the carotid bifurcation, and on the other hand, Newtonian fluid is a good approximation to blood for flow simulations in the carotid artery bifurcation.
Yubo FanWentao JiangYuanwen ZouJinchuan LiJunkai ChenXiaoyan Deng
Osteoblasts were cultured on porous scaffolds of poly(L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) and PLGA/β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) to evaluate their cytocompatibility.The proliferation of the cells on both scaffolds was examined before and after in vitro degradation for 4,8 and 12 weeks under static (shaking water bath) and dynamic (cyclic loading) conditions.Results indicate that porous PLGA and PLGA/β-TCP scaffolds have good biocompatibility and can be used as effective templates for guiding the growth of osteoblasts.The degradation of the scaffolds affects the proliferation of osteoblasts and the cell viability decreased with the degradation time.
YANG YanFangTANG GongWenZHAO YunHuiZHANG YangLI XiuLanYUAN XiaoYan
