Porous medium finite element model of the beating left ventricle

The axisymmetric model describes myocardial tissue as a spongy saturated anisotropic viscoelastic material. It includes torsion around the axis of symmetry, transmural variation of fiber angle and redistribution of intracoronary blood in the myocardial wall. The contractile fiber is taken strain, strain-rate and time dependent. During a normal cycle, equatorial intramyocardial pressure differed by <5 % from peak intraventricular pressure. When redistribution of intracoronary blood pressure was suppressed, peak intramyocardial pressure was found to exeed peak intraventricular pressure by more tnan 30 %. Simulated contraction of an unloaded left ventricle produced similar magnitude ofsystolic intramyocardial pressure as the normal cycle