Numerical simulation of fluid flow in a blood pump in the FlowVision software package

A numerical simulation of fluid flow in a blood pump was performed using the FlowVision software package. This test problem, provided by the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the US. Food and Drug Administration, involved considering fluid flow according to several design modes. At the same time for each case of calculation a certain value of liquid flow rate and rotor speed was set. Necessary data for calculations in the form of exact geometry, flow conditions and fluid characteristics were provided to all research participants, who used different software packages for modeling. Numerical simulations were performed in FlowVision for six calculation modes with the Newtonian fluid and standard $k-\epsilon$ turbulence model, in addition, the fifth mode with the $k-\omega$ SST turbulence model and with the Caro rheological fluid model were performed. In the first stage of the numerical simulation, the convergence over the mesh was investigated, on the basis of which a final mesh with a number of cells of the order of 6 million was chosen. Due to the large number of cells, in order to accelerate the study, part of the calculations was performed on the Lomonosov-2 cluster. As a result of numerical simulation, we obtained and analyzed values of pressure difference between inlet and outlet of the pump, velocity between rotor blades and in the area of diffuser, and also, we carried out visualization of velocity distribution in certain cross-sections. For all design modes there was compared the pressure difference received numerically with the experimental data, and for the fifth calculation mode there was also compared with the experiment by speed distribution between rotor blades and in the area of diffuser. Data analysis has shown good correlation of calculation results in FlowVision with experimental results and numerical simulation in other software packages. The results obtained in FlowVision for solving the US FDA test suggest that FlowVision software package can be used for solving a wide range of hemodynamic problems.