Occlusional performance of sole endoluminal stenting of intracranial aneurysms
is controversially discussed in the literature. Simulation of blood flow has
been studied to shed light on possible causal attributions. The outcome
however, largely depends on various free parameters which all have considerable
impact on simulation results. The choice of a numerical method could
be seen as the first free parameter. The present study is therefore conducted
to find ways to define parameters and efficiently explore the huge parameter space for Finite-Element-Methods (FEM), Lattice-Boltzmann-Methods
(LBM) and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). The goal is to identify
both the impact of different parameters on the results of Computational
Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and their advantages and disadvantages. CFD is applied
to assess flow and aneurysmal vorticity. A parallel use of the different
numerical methods may result in a better understanding of blood flow and
may also lead to more accurate information about factors that influence conditions
for stenting of intracranial aneurysms. Different simulation domains
are examined: high resolution 2D architectures of the intracranial aneurysm
based on histology and 3D medium resolution architectures based on MRI.
To assess and compare initial simulation results, simplifying 2D and 3D models
based on key features of real geometry and medical expert knowledge were
used.