Objectives 2016

This is the 7th Summer School on Biomechanics presenting a state-of-the-art overview of biomechanical and mechanobiological multiscale modeling of soft biological tissues with related computer simulations and their applications. The lectures will cover constitutive modeling of soft tissues such as arteries, including different aspects of structural modeling, then cartilage and the heart in comparison with experimental data. Also will be included the continuum theory of mixtures, coupled models with molecular signaling pathways, growth and remodeling, developmental biomechanics and discussion of the nonlinear finite element method with applications in biomedical engineering including implants.

The essential ingredients of continuum mechanics are provided since they are key for the modeling of soft biological tissues. Constitutive models of soft fibrous biological materials, with an emphasis on arterial walls considering collagen fiber orientation, dispersion and recruitment and the myocardium. Other topics included are: mixture theory of growth and remodeling and associated residual stresses; an introduction to CellML, OpenCOR, Physiome Model Repository; models of action potential propagation in neurons; calcium transport and myofilament mechanics in the heart; the mechanics of growth and morphogenesis; heart, brain, and eye development; mechanical feedback in the embryo; the elasticity of biopolymer filaments and the mechanics of cross-linked actin networks. The nonlinear finite element method is introduced and computational tools are developed that support device design and surgical operation planning. Particular attention is paid to multiphysics and multiscale modeling of arterial walls, the 3D heart, cartilage and to simulations of transcatheter aortic valve implantation, stents and aortic endografting.

Throughout the course the lecturers will point to future directions for research in the different areas of biomechanics and mechanobiology as well as coupled phenomena.

Participants are requested to bring a laptop with the OpenCOR software installed, which runs on Windows, Mac and several flavours of Linux. To install and run OpenCOR see the tutorial of PJ Hunter that can be downloaded here.