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Updated: Feb 6, 2026

Biaxial Mechanical Characterizations of Atrioventricular Heart Valves
Published on: April 9, 2019
Fully coupled fluid-electro-mechanical model of the human heart for supercomputers
Alfonso Santiago1, Jazmín Aguado-Sierra1, Miguel Zavala-Aké1
1Department of Computer Applications in Science and Engineering, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract:
In this work, we present a fully coupled fluid-electro-mechanical model of a 50th percentile human heart. The model is implemented on Alya, the BSC multi-physics parallel code, capable of running efficiently in supercomputers. Blood in the cardiac cavities is modeled by the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) scheme. Electrophysiology is modeled with a monodomain scheme and the O'Hara-Rudy cell model. Solid mechanics is modeled with a total Lagrangian formulation for discrete strains using the Holzapfel-Ogden cardiac tissue material model. The three problems are simultaneously and bidirectionally coupled through an electromechanical feedback and a fluid-structure interaction scheme. In this paper, we present the scheme in detail and propose it as a computational cardiac workbench.
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