Modelling mitral valvular dynamics–current trend and future directions

Dysfunction of mitral valve causes morbidity and premature mortality and remains a leading medical problem worldwide. Computational modelling aims to understand the biomechanics of human mitral valve and could lead to the development of new treatment, prevention and diagnosis of mitral valve diseases. Compared with the aortic valve, the mitral valve has been much less studied owing to its highly complex structure and strong interaction with the blood flow and the ventricles. However, the interest in mitral valve modelling is growing, and the sophistication level is increasing with the advanced development of computational technology and imaging tools. This review summarises the state-of-the-art modelling of the mitral valve, including static and dynamics models, models with fluid-structure interaction, and models with the left ventricle interaction. Challenges and future directions are also discussed

Large-scale structural analysis: The structural analyst, the CSM Testbed and the NAS System

The Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) activity is developing advanced structural analysis and computational methods that exploit high-performance computers. Methods are developed in the framework of the CSM testbed software system and applied to representative complex structural analysis problems from the aerospace industry. An overview of the CSM testbed methods development environment is presented and some numerical methods developed on a CRAY-2 are described. Selected application studies performed on the NAS CRAY-2 are also summarized

Spectral/hp element methods: recent developments, applications, and perspectives

The spectral/hp element method combines the geometric flexibility of the classical h-type finite element technique with the desirable numerical properties of spectral methods, employing high-degree piecewise polynomial basis functions on coarse finite element-type meshes. The spatial approximation is based upon orthogonal polynomials, such as Legendre or Chebychev polynomials, modified to accommodate C0-continuous expansions. Computationally and theoretically, by increasing the polynomial order p, high-precision solutions and fast convergence can be obtained and, in particular, under certain regularity assumptions an exponential reduction in approximation error between numerical and exact solutions can be achieved. This method has now been applied in many simulation studies of both fundamental and practical engineering flows. This paper briefly describes the formulation of the spectral/hp element method and provides an overview of its application to computational fluid dynamics. In particular, it focuses on the use the spectral/hp element method in transitional flows and ocean engineering. Finally, some of the major challenges to be overcome in order to use the spectral/hp element method in more complex science and engineering applications are discussed

A finite strain nonlinear human mitral valve model with fluid structure interaction

A simulated human mitral valve under a physiological pressure loading is developed using a hybrid finite element immersed boundary method, which incorporates experimentally based constitutive laws in a three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction framework. A transversely isotropic material constitutive model is used for characterizing the mechanical behaviour of the mitral valve tissue based on recent mechanical tests of healthy human mitral leaflets. Our results show good agreement, in terms of the flow rate and the closing and opening configurations, with the measurements from the magnetic resonance images. The stresses in the anterior leaflet are found to be higher than those in the posterior leaflet, and concentrated around the annulus trigons and free edges of the valve leaflets. Those areas are located where the leaflet has the highest curvature. Effects of the chordae tendineae in the material model are studied and the results show that these chordae play an important role in providing a secondary orifice for the flow when valve opens. Although there are some discrepancies to be overcome in future works, our simulations show that the developed computational model is promising in mimicking the in vivo mitral valve dynamics and providing important information that are not obtainable by in vivo measurements. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Simulation of flows with violent free surface motion and moving objects using unstructured grids

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Löhner, R. , Yang, C. and Oñate, E. (2007), Simulation of flows with violent free surface motion and moving objects using unstructured grids. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Fluids, 53: 1315-1338. doi:10.1002/fld.1244], which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/fld.1244. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.A volume of fluid (VOF) technique has been developed and coupled with an incompressible Euler/Navier–Stokes solver operating on adaptive, unstructured grids to simulate the interactions of extreme waves and three-dimensional structures. The present implementation follows the classic VOF implementation for the liquid–gas system, considering only the liquid phase. Extrapolation algorithms are used to obtain velocities and pressure in the gas region near the free surface. The VOF technique is validated against the classic dam-break problem, as well as series of 2D sloshing experiments and results from SPH calculations. These and a series of other examples demonstrate that the ability of the present approach to simulate violent free surface flows with strong nonlinear behaviour.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

CSM Testbed Development and Large-Scale Structural Applications

A research activity called Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) conducted at the NASA Langley Research Center is described. This activity is developing advanced structural analysis and computational methods that exploit high-performance computers. Methods are developed in the framework of the CSM Testbed software system and applied to representative complex structural analysis problems from the aerospace industry. An overview of the CSM Testbed methods development environment is presented and some new numerical methods developed on a CRAY-2 are described. Selected application studies performed on the NAS CRAY-2 are also summarized

On the numerical modelling of bond for the failure analysis of reinforced concrete

The structural performance of reinforced concrete relies heavily on the bond between reinforcement and concrete. In nonlinear finite element analyses, bond is either modelled by merged, also called perfect bond, or coincident with slip, also called bond-slip, approaches. Here, the performance of these two approaches for the modelling of failure of reinforced concrete was investigated using a damage-plasticity constitutive model in LS-DYNA. Firstly, the influence of element size on the response of tension-stiffening analyses with the two modelling approaches was investigated. Then, the results of the two approaches were compared for plain and fibre reinforced tension stiffening and a drop weight impact test. It was shown that only the coincident with slip approach provided mesh insensitive results. However, both approaches were capable of reproducing the overall response of the experiments in the form of load and displacements satisfactorily for the meshes used