Hydrodynamic Modeling of Cerebrospinal Fluid Motion within the Spinal Cavity

摘要

In the present work, a geometric and hydrodynamic characterization of an anatomically relevant spinal canal model is presented. A numerical model was employed to investigate effects of cross-sectional geometry and spinal cord motion on unsteady velocity, shear stress, and pressure gradient fields. The velocity field was shown to be blunt, due to the inertial character of the flow, with velocity peaks located near the boundaries of the spinal canal rather than at the midpoint between boundaries. The pressure gradient waveform was found to be almost exclusively dependent on the flow waveform and cross-sectional area.