Investigating the Effect of a Single Peristalsis Wave on Unobstructed Ureter Using a Computational Technique

The ureter transports urine from the kidney to the bladder. During the peristalsis, the contraction of the ureter helps to move the urine in bolus form. In the current work, the ureter is modeled and a single peristalsis wave is used to know the effect of pressure and velocity at a different location in the ureter at different intervals of time for four inlet boundary conditions. A three-dimensional ureter model with 275 mm length is used in the current work. The analysis is carried out using a commercially available computational dynamic package ANSYS-CFX. A single sinusoidal peristaltic wave with a change in pressure is used for the analysis. The inlet pressure is varied as 0.1 Pa, 0.3 Pa, 0.5 Pa, and 0.7 Pa. The maximum pressure was found to be 1.28 Pa at an input pressure of 0.7Pa. In the neck region, a negative pressure of -1.03 Pa is observed at 0.1 Pa. At time T/4, it is observed that the maximum velocity of 0.0406 m/s at N1. In all the other time steps and locations, the minimum velocity of 0.017 m/s is observed. The reverse flow due to negative pressure will develop the urinary tract infection in the ureter and result in the bacteria and toxins from the ureter into the renal pelvis and kidneys.