Mathematical modelling of atheroma plaque formation and development in coronary arteries

Atherosclerosis is a vascular disease caused by inflammation of the arterial wall, which results in the accumulation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, monocytes, macrophages and fat-laden foam cells at the place of the inflammation. This process is commonly referred to as plaque formation. The evolution of the atherosclerosis disease, and in particular the influence of wall shear stress on the growth of atherosclerotic plaques, is still a poorly understood phenomenon. This work presents a mathematical model to reproduce atheroma plaque growth in coronary arteries. This model uses the Navier–Stokes equations and Darcy''s law for fluid dynamics, convection–diffusion–reaction equations for modelling the mass balance in the lumen and intima, and the Kedem–Katchalsky equations for the interfacial coupling at membranes, i.e. endothelium. The volume flux and the solute flux across the interface between the fluid and the porous domains are governed by a three-pore model. The main species and substances which play a role in early atherosclerosis development have been considered in the model, i.e. LDL, oxidized LDL, monocytes, macrophages, foam cells, smooth muscle cells, cytokines and collagen. Furthermore, experimental data taken from the literature have been used in order to physiologically determine model parameters. The mathematical model has been implemented in a representative axisymmetric geometrical coronary artery model. The results show that the mathematical model is able to qualitatively capture the atheroma plaque development observed in the intima layer.     

Computational fluid dynamics by boundary–domain integral method

A boundary–domain integral method for the solution of general transport phenomena in incompressible fluid motion given by the Navier–Stokes equation set is presented. Velocity–vorticity formulation of the conservation equations is employed. Different integral representations for conservation field functions based on different fundamental solutions are developed. Special attention is given to the use of subdomain technique and Krylov subspace iterative solvers. The computed solutions of several benchmark problems agree well with available experimental and other computational results. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Artificial Boundary Condition for a Class of Quasi-Newtonian Stokes Flows

An artificial boundary condition method, derived in terms of infinite Fourier series, is applied to solve a class of quasi-Newtonian Stokes flows. Based on the natural boundary reduction involving an artificial condition on the artificial boundary, the coupled variational problem and its numerical solution are obtained. The unique solvability of the continuous and discrete formulations are discussed, and the error analysis for the problem is also considered. Finally, an a posteriori error estimate for the corresponding problem is provided.     

假设位移拟协调平面单元应变离散算法研究

应变-位移方程的弱化和离散是拟协调有限元列式中的一个基本问题,也是假设应变有限元方法的一个重要问题。该文通过研究拟协调有限元中的平面单元列式,考察了不同应变离散算法下单元的性能。通过理论分析和数值实验,证明了对同一个应变项的计算可以选择不同的应变-位移式进行计算,应变-位移式的选择并不影响所构造单元的收敛性。该文结果解决了拟协调有限元的一个基础问题,可以指导拟协调有限元的列式,也为一般的弹性力学数值分析中应变-位移方程的处理提供依据。     

The XFEM for high‐gradient solutions in convection‐dominated problems

Convection‐dominated problems typically involve solutions with high gradients near the domain boundaries (boundary layers) or inside the domain (shocks). The approximation of such solutions by means of the standard finite element method requires stabilization in order to avoid spurious oscillations. However, accurate results may still require a mesh refinement near the high gradients. Herein, we investigate the extended finite element method (XFEM) with a new enrichment scheme that enables highly accurate results without stabilization or mesh refinement. A set of regularized Heaviside functions is used for the enrichment in the vicinity of the high gradients. Different linear and non‐linear problems in one and two dimensions are considered and show the ability of the proposed enrichment to capture arbitrary high gradients in the solutions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ITERATIVE SOLUTION OF COUPLED FE/BE DISCRETIZATIONS FOR PLATE–FOUNDATION INTERACTION PROBLEMS

In the present paper, a scheme is developed for the coupled FE/BE analysis of a plate–foundation interaction problem, in which the boundary element equations of the foundation are not explicitly assembled with the finite element equations of the plate, but instead an iterative procedure is proposed to obtain the final coupled solution. This iterative scheme preserves the nature of the BE and FE approaches and the coupled procedure can be easily implemented within an integrated FEM/BEM software environment. The scheme also reduces the computer storage requirement and avoids the error introduced by symmetrization of the BE equations. In addition, some important issues related to the scheme, such as convergence conditions and parameter selection, are discussed. A numerical example is provided to illustrate pthe benefits of the scheme. It is noted, however, that the overall performance of the proposed scheme when compared with the conventional direct solution of the unsymmetric equations arising from the explicit coupling of the FE and BE equations, depends on the choice of a free parameter and a matrix contained in the scheme.