Estimation of pulsatile energy dissipation in intersecting pipe junctions using inflow pulsatility indices

This study aims to characterize the effect of inflow pulsatility on the hydrodynamic power loss inside intersecting double-inlet, double-outlet pipe intersection (DIPI) with cross-flow mixing. An extensive set of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations was performed in order to identify the individual effects of flow pulsatility parameters, i.e., amplitude, frequency, and relative phase shift between the inflow waveform oscillations, on power loss. An experimentally validated second order accurate solver is employed in this study. To predict the pulsatile flow performance of any given arbitrary inflow waveforms, we proposed three easy-to-calculate pulsatility indices. The frequency-coupled quasi-steady flow theory is incorporated to identify the functional form of pulsatile power loss as a function of these indices. Our results indicated that the power loss within the inflow branch sections, lumped outflow-junction section, and the whole conduit correlates strongly with the pulsatility of each inflow waveform, the total inflow pulsatility, and inflow frequency content, respectively. The complete CFD simulation matrix provided a unified analytical expression that predicts pulsatile power loss inside a one-degree offset DIPI geometry. The predictive accuracy of this expression is evaluated in comparison to the CFD evaluation of arbitrary multi-harmonic inflow waveforms. These results have important implications on hydrodynamic pipe networks that employ complex junctions as well as in the patient-to-patient comparison of surgically created vascular connections. Coupling the present analytical pulsatile power loss expression with non-dimensional steady power loss formulation provided a valuable predictive tool to estimate the pulsatile energy dissipation for any arbitrary junction geometry with minimum use of the costly CFD computations.