École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Abstract

The glymphatic system is a recently studied pathway for metabolic waste clearance in the human brain. The precise functioning of this system is controversial from both a neuroanatomical and a mechanical point of view. Numerical models can be useful to identify the driving force of the cerebrospinal fluid in the glymphatic pathway. If arterial pulsations constitute this driving force, such models necessitate to simulate the deformation of cerebral arteries caused by blood flow. This work achieves this simulation under three methods. We present the physical assumptions and the mathematical formulation of each of these methods and implement them for a cylindrical artery or an arterial bifurcation. Results are then discussed to compare the methods. The one-dimensional method is faster than the three-dimensional ones but leads to a discontinuity at the bifurcation point. The monolithic fluid-structure interaction approach is more precise but time consuming. The coupled momentum method gives us hope to obtain physiologically accurate results in a reasonable amount of time.