A smoothed finite element method for analysis of anisotropic large deformation of passive rabbit ventricles in diastole.
The smoothed FEM (S-FEM) is firstly extended to explore the behavior of 3D anisotropic large deformation of rabbit ventricles during the passive filling process in diastole. Because of the incompressibility of myocardium, a special method called selective face-based/node-based S-FEM using four-node tetrahedral elements (FS/NS-FEM-TET4) is adopted in order to avoid volumetric locking. To validate the proposed algorithms of FS/NS-FEM-TET4, the 3D Lame problem is implemented. The performance contest results show that our FS/NS-FEM-TET4 is accurate, volumetric locking-free and insensitive to mesh distortion than standard linear FEM because of absence of isoparametric mapping. Actually, the efficiency of FS/NS-FEM-TET4 is comparable with higher-order FEM, such as 10-node tetrahedral elements. The proposed method for Holzapfel myocardium hyperelastic strain energy is also validated by simple shear tests through the comparison outcomes reported in available references. Finally, the FS/NS-FEM-TET4 is applied in the example of the passive filling of MRI-based rabbit ventricles with fiber architecture derived from rule-based algorithm to demonstrate its efficiency. Hence, we conclude that FS/NS-FEM-TET4 is a promising alternative other than FEM in passive cardiac mechanics.
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology of Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, 410082, People's Republic of China.
Chen
C
Jiang
Gui-Rong
GR
Liu
Xu
X
Han
Zhi-Qian
ZQ
Zhang
Wei
W
Zeng
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D016880:Anisotropy; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003971:Diastole / Q000502:physiology*; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D011817:Rabbits; D016276:Ventricular Function / Q000502:physiology*
MRI; S-FEM; anisotropy; large deformation; rule-based algorithm; ventricular mechanics