Otero Cacho, AlbertoAymerich López, María de la InmaculadaFlores-Arias, María TeresaAbal Posada, MiguelÁlvarez Castro, EzequielPérez Muñuzuri, VicentePérez Muñuzuri, Alberto2018-10-312018-10-312018-02-12Otero-Cacho, A., Aymerich, M., Flores-Arias, M., Abal, M., Álvarez, E., Pérez-Muñuzuri, V., & Muñuzuri, A. (2018). Determination of hemodynamic risk for vascular disease in planar artery bifurcations. Scientific Reports, 8(1). doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-21126-12045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10347/17644Understanding hemodynamics in blood circulation is crucial in order to unveil the mechanisms underlying the formation of stenosis and atherosclerosis. In fact, there are experimental evidences pointing out to the existence of some given vessel configurations that are more likely to develop the above mentioned pathologies. Along this manuscript, we performed an exhaustive investigation in a simplified model aiming to characterize by means of physical quantities those regions and configurations in vessel bifurcations that are more likely to develop such pathologies. The two-fold analysis is based, on the one hand, on numerical simulations (via CFD) and, on the other hand, on experiments realized in an ad-hoc designed polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channel with the appropriate parameters and appropriate fluid flows. The results obtained demonstrate that low velocity regions and low shear stress zones are located in the outer walls of bifurcations. In fact, we found that there is a critical range of bifurcation angles that is more likely to vascular disease than the others in correspondence with some experimental evidence. The effect of the inflow velocity on this critical range is also analyzedeng© Te Author(s) 2018. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Atribución 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/BiophysicsCardiologyjournal article10.1038/s41598-018-21126-1open access