Technical Papers and Presentations

This paper describes the use of structural mechanics capabilities within COMSOL to explore new cooling catheter designs. Cooling catheters may be used to save ischemic tissue resulting from strokes or heart attacks. Typical guide catheters use metallic braiding to ensure torsional strength. Braiding, however, displaces space for flows and limits design options.

To explore alternatives to braiding, the work described in this paper was started. Both homogeneous and composite tube models were explored. COMSOL successfully predicted angle of twist along the longitudinal length of catheter for both models. Various plastic composite tubes were modeled, none reaching the equivalent torsional strength to braided catheters.