PD Dr. Axel Loewe, PD Dr. Mathias Krause

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Motivation and Background
Computational modeling and simulation is a promising approach to tackle cardiovascular diseases, which remain a major reason for morbidity and mortality around the world. The pumping of blood is driven by the mechanical contraction of the heart. Both processes can be modeled (continuum solid mechanics and fluid mechanics, Brenneisen et al. 2021) but their interplay is complex. Taking also comprehensive patient-specific measurements into account for the simulations is a great challenge. For example, solving parameter identification through inverse problem formulations (Kovacheva et al. 2021) incurs high computational costs in classic Finite Element Method (FEM) settings. Lattice Boltzmann Methods (LBM) are computationally more efficient and were successfully used to identify static fluid domain boundaries (Klemens et al. 2018). Their further development and application are the overall goals of this project. 

Student Project
This Master thesis project shall extend the LBM-based approach to moving domains as occurring in the human heart. The objective is to compute the time course of the position of the heart wall during the cardiac cycle compatible with the Navier Stokes equation for a given intracardiac blood flow fields. For this, the student will be integrated in the Cardiac Modeling Group at IBT (FEM con-tinuum cardiac mechanics expertise) and the Lattice Boltzmann Research Group at IANM/MVM (LBM expertise). The details of the project can be tailored to your expertise and goals.

If you are interested or have questions, send an email!