An orthotropic viscoelastic model for the human passive myocardium was developed and successfully applied to elastic, cyclic, and relaxation test data to conduct finite element simulations.
This study presents a novel orthotropic viscoelastic computational model for human passive myocardium, improving the numerical simulation of myocardial mechanics.
This study deals with the viscoelastic constitutive modeling and the respective computational analysis of the human passive myocardium. We start by recapitulating the locally orthotropic inner structure of the human myocardial tissue and model the mechanical response through invariants and structure tensors associated with three orthonormal basis vectors. In accordance with recent experimental findings the ventricular myocardial tissue is assumed to be incompressible, thick-walled, orthotropic and viscoelastic. In particular, one spring element coupled with Maxwell elements in parallel endows the model with viscoelastic features such that four dashpots describe the viscous response due to matrix, fiber, sheet and fiber-sheet fragments. In order to alleviate the numerical obstacles, the strictly incompressible model is altered by decomposing the free-energy function into volumetric-isochoric elastic and isochoric-viscoelastic parts along with the multiplicative split of the deformation gradient which enables the three-field mixed finite element method. The crucial aspect of the viscoelastic formulation is linked to the rate equations of the viscous overstresses resulting from a 3-D analogy of a generalized 1-D Maxwell model. We provide algorithmic updates for second Piola-Kirchhoff stress and elasticity tensors. In the sequel, we address some numerical aspects of the constitutive model by applying it to elastic, cyclic and relaxation test data obtained from biaxial extension and triaxial shear tests whereby we assess the fitting capacity of the model. With the tissue parameters identified, we conduct (elastic and viscoelastic) finite element simulations for an ellipsoidal geometry retrieved from a human specimen.
Gültekin et al. (Wed,) conducted a other in Passive myocardium biomechanics. Orthotropic viscoelastic constitutive modeling was evaluated on Fitting capacity of the model to elastic, cyclic and relaxation test data. An orthotropic viscoelastic model for the human passive myocardium was developed and successfully applied to elastic, cyclic, and relaxation test data to conduct finite element simulations.