Abstract
The first objective of this thesis is to generate and analyse CFD-based databases for the intracardiac flow in realistic geometries. To this aim, an image-based CFD strategy is applied to both a pathological and a healthy human left hearts. The second objective is to illustrate how the numerical database can be analysed in order to gain insight about the intracardiac flow, mainly focusing on the unsteady and turbulent features. A numerical framework allowing insight in fluid dynamics inside patient-specific human hearts is first presented. The heart cavities and their wall dynamics are extracted from medical images, with the help of an image registration algorithm, in order to obtain a patient-specific moving numerical domain. Flow equations are written on a conformal moving computational domain, using an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian framework. Valves are modelled using immersed boundaries.Application of this framework to compute flow and turbulence statistics in both a realistic pathological and a realistic healthy human left hearts is presented. The blood flow is characterized by its transitional nature, resulting in a complex cyclic flow. Flow dynamics is analysed in order to reveal the main fluid phenomena and to obtain insights into the physiological patterns commonly detected. It is demonstrated that the flow is neither laminar nor fully turbulent, thus justifying a posteriori the use of Large Eddy Simulation.The unsteady development of turbulence is analysed from the phase averaged flow, flow statistics, the turbulent stresses, the turbulent kinetic energy, its production and through spectral analysis. A Lagrangian analysis is also presented using Lagrangian particles to gather statistical flow data. In addition to a number of classically reported features on the left heart flow, this work reveals how disturbed and transitional the flow is and describes the mechanisms of turbulence production.