MESH UPDATING IN FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTIONS IN BIOMECHANICS - AN ITERATIVE METHOD BASED ON AN UNCOUPLED APPROACH

In this study, a computational uncoupled approach to fluid-structure i nteraction problems in biofluid mechanics is presented, It is based on the finite element method and is applied to study the local fluid dyn amics in two specific situations: the left ventricular ejection phase and the motion of an isolated red blood cell along a small artery. Par ticularly, the focus is on the algorithms developed to deal with mesh updating, because both examined districts are characterized by geometr ical deformations of the fluid domain edges. This is currently a chall enging issue in the application of computational fluid dynamics techni ques to living systems, especially to the cardiovascular system. Altho ugh the chosen approach uses a commercial computational fluid dynamics package for the solution of the fluid domain, original algorithms hav e been developed to perform the boundary displacement calculations cor rectly, as well as the corresponding mesh updating. Results are report ed and compared with available data in the literature pertinent to the two studied problems.