Computer aspects of three-dimensional finite element analysis of stresses and strains in the intact heart

✍ Scribed by Robert M. Heethaar; Y.C. Pao; Erik L. Ritman

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1977
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 839 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0010-4809
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-4809(77)90042-8

✦ Synopsis

Three main computing aspects encountered in the stress and strain analysis of the intact heart using the finite element technique, namely, the automatic partitioning of the myocardium of the heart into finite elements, the assemblage of the structural stiffness matrix of the myocardium, and the storage and retrieval of its nonzero coefficients are described. The influence of boundary conditions and different relaxation factors on the speed of convergence to the final solution are also described. Programming for the solution of the large number of simultaneous linear equations generated by the finite element method on computers with capacity not exceeding 32K words of memory required special attention to very compact storage of the stiffness matrix and the retrieval of its coefficients. Computation time for the three-dimensional stress and strainanalysis of a heart represented by approximately 7CKKl finite elements was less than 20-25 min on a CDC 3500 computer operated in the multibatch MASTER mode.