| Summary: | The heart is a complex organ and much is still unknown about its mechanical function. In
order to use simulations to study heart mechanics, fluid and solid components and their
interaction should be incorporated into any numerical model. Many previous studies have
focused on myocardium motion or blood flow separately, while neglecting their interaction.
Previous fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations of heart mechanics have made
simplifying assumptions about their solid models, which prevented them from accurately
predicting the stress-stain behaviour of the myocardium. In this work, a numerical model
of the canine left ventricle (LV) is presented, which serves to address the limitations of previous studies. A canine LV myocardium material model was developed for use in conjunction with a commercial finite element code. The material model was modified from its original form to make it suitable for use in simulations. Further, numerical constraints were imposed when calculating the material parameter values, to ensure that the model would be strictly convex. An initial geometry and non-zero stress state are required to start cardiac cycle simulations. These were generated by the static inflation of a passive LV model to an end-diastolic pressure. Comparisons with previous measurements verified that the calculated geometry was representative of end diastole. Stresses calculated at the specified end diastolic pressure showed complex spatial variations, illustrating the superiority
of the present approach over a specification of an arbitrary stress distribution to an
end-diastolic geometry. In the third part of this study, FSI simulations of the mechanics
of the LV were performed over the cardiac cycle. Calculated LV cavity pressures agreed
well with previous measurements during most of the cardiac cycle, but deviated from them
during rapid filling, which resulted in non-physiological backflow. This study is the first one to present a detailed analysis of the temporal and spatial variations of the properties of both the solid and the fluid components of the canine LV. The observed development of non-uniform pressure distributions in the LV cavity confirms the advantage of performing FSI simulations rather than imposing a uniform fluid pressure on the inner surface of the myocardium during solid-only simulations.
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