A parallel domain decomposition algorithm for fluid-structure interaction simulations of the left ventricle with patient-specific shape

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a scalable parallel algorithm for simulating the cardiac fluid-structure interactions (FSI) of a patient-specific human left ventricle. It provides an efficient forward solver to deal with the induced sub-problems in solving an inverse problem that can be used to quantify the interested parameters. The FSI between the blood flow and the myocardium is described in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALU) framework, in which the velocity and stress are assumed being continuous across the fluid-structure interface. The governing equations are discretized by using a finite element method and a fully implicit backward Eulerian formula, and the resulting algebraic system is solved by using a parallel Newton-Krylov-Schwarz algorithm. We numerically show that the algorithm is robust with respect to multiple model parameters and scales well up to 2300 processor cores. The ability of the proposed method to produce qualitatively true prediction is also demonstrated via comparing the simulation results with the clinic data.

Keywords

• fluid-structure interaction
• human heart
• left ventricle
• finite element method
• parallel computing