Packaged in a pre-loaded configuration, the iStent is inserted through a small corneal incision made during cataract surgery and placed into Schlemm's canal, a
circular channel in the eye that collects aqueous humor and eventually delivers it into the bloodstream.
In the present research, the orientations of molecules have been studied in a polymer melt flow passes through a
circular channel. This has been accomplished by using polymer dynamics based on the conformational tensor models.
This
circular channel was attached to a control gate and a discharge tank through another direct channel which was 5.5 meters long (figure 1).
The working volume of the loading unit was simplified assuming it as a parallelepiped with a cross-section corresponding the size of moving plate in hydraulic loading unit (55x60 mm), and consisting of two 100 mm length chambers, separated by the diaphragm having a changeable diameter
circular channel (from 3 to 12 mm).
Figure 8 shows a cross-section cut of polystyrene taken near the end of the
circular channel.
To avoid discretization of the
circular channel along the circumference, which would require a lot of small triangular shell elements, and thus save a substantial amount of computer memory, the so-called line source (sink) approach first developed by Barone and Caulk [24] and further extended by Rezayat and Burton [25] for cooling channel simplification in three-dimensional parts was implemented.