Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Fabrication of Carbon-Based Ionic Electromechanically Active Soft Actuators
Published on: April 25, 2020
GEMS: A Fully Integrated PETSc-Based Solver for Coupled Cardiac Electromechanics and Bidomain Simulations
Sander Arens1, Hans Dierckx1, Alexander V Panfilov1,2
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Abstract:
Cardiac contraction is coordinated by a wave of electrical excitation which propagates through the heart. Combined modeling of electrical and mechanical function of the heart provides the most comprehensive description of cardiac function and is one of the latest trends in cardiac research. The effective numerical modeling of cardiac electromechanics remains a challenge, due to the stiffness of the electrical equations and the global coupling in the mechanical problem. Here we present a short review of the inherent assumptions made when deriving the electromechanical equations, including a general representation for deformation-dependent conduction tensors obeying orthotropic symmetry, and then present an implicit-explicit time-stepping approach that is tailored to solving the cardiac mono- or bidomain equations coupled to electromechanics of the cardiac wall. Our approach allows to find numerical solutions of the electromechanics equations using stable and higher order time integration. Our methods are implemented in a monolithic finite element code GEMS (Ghent Electromechanics Solver) using the PETSc library that is inherently parallelized for use on high-performance computing infrastructure. We tested GEMS on standard benchmark computations and discuss further development of our software.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
G-protein Coupled Receptors
Spin–Spin Coupling: Two-Bond Coupling (Geminal Coupling)
The central atom need not be NMR-active because its electrons are affected by the electron polarization of the spin-active atoms. However, spin information is transmitted less effectively than in one-bond coupling, and 2J values are usually weaker than 1J values. The energy of...
Spin–Spin Coupling: Three-Bond Coupling (Vicinal Coupling)
The extent of coupling depends on the C‑C bond length, the two H‑C‑C angles, any electron-withdrawing substituents, and the dihedral angle between the involved orbitals. The...
Spin–Spin Coupling: One-Bond Coupling
Integration by Parts: Indefinite Integrals
Integration by Parts: Definite Integrals

