A computational framework for pharmaco-mechanical interactions in arterial walls using parallel monolithic domain decomposition methods
Abstract
A computational framework is presented to numerically simulate the effects of antihypertensive drugs, in particular calcium channel blockers, on the mechanical response of arterial walls. A stretch-dependent smooth muscle model by Uhlmann and Balzani is modified to describe the interaction of pharmacological drugs and the inhibition of smooth muscle activation. The coupled deformation-diffusion problem is then solved using the finite element software FEDDLib and overlapping Schwarz preconditioners from the Trilinos package FROSch. These preconditioners include highly scalable parallel GDSW (generalized Dryja-Smith-Widlund) and RDSW (reduced GDSW) preconditioners. Simulation results show the expected increase in the lumen diameter of an idealized artery due to the drug-induced reduction of smooth muscle contraction, as well as a decrease in the rate of arterial contraction in the presence of calcium channel blockers. Strong and weak parallel scalability of the resulting computational implementation are also analyzed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2307.02972,
title = {A computational framework for pharmaco-mechanical interactions in arterial walls using parallel monolithic domain decomposition methods},
author = {Daniel Balzani and Alexander Heinlein and Axel Klawonn and Jascha Knepper and Sharan Nurani Ramesh and Oliver Rheinbach and Lea Sassmannshausen and Klemens Uhlmann},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.02972},
year = {2023}
}