Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) is recognized by clinicians as an index of
mechanical properties of human blood vessels. This concept is based on the Moens-
Korteweg equation, which describes the PWV in ideal elastic tubes. However, measured
PWV of real human blood vessels cannot be always interpreted by the Moens-Korteweg
equation because this formula is not precisely applicable to living blood vessels. It is
important to understand the wave propagation in blood vessels for a more reliable
diagnosis of vascular disease. In this study, we modeled uniform arteries in a threedimensional
coupled fluid-solid interaction computational scheme, and analyzed the
pulse wave propagation. A commercial code (Radioss, Altair Engineering) was used to
solve the fluid-solid interactions. We compared the regional PWV values obtained from
various computational models with those from the Moens-Korteweg equation, and
discuss the accuracy of our computation. The PWV values from the thick-walled artery
model are lower than those from the Moens-Korteweg equation. Nevertheless, the
differences are less than 7% up to 12 m/s of the PWV, indicating these computational
methods for the PWV analysis are accurate enough to evaluate its value quantitatively.
Keywords: Pulse wave propagation, fluid-solid interactions, PWV, large blood
vessels, blood flow, Moens-Korteweg equation, arterial wall stiffness, arbitrary
lagrangian eulerian, wave reflection, sound speed.
