Nonuniform cavity pressure and ventricular mechanics (Q1905511)

The anisotropic elastic behavior of the left ventricle (LV) due to fiber orientation is now well recognized. Treating the myocardium as a fluid-fiber continuum has been successfully applied to the LV modeled as a finite thick-walled cylindrical cavity with time-varying, but spatially uniform, pressure (when the cavity pressure is nonuniform, the results were not successfull). In this work, using a fluid-fiber mechanical model for myocardium and applying a nonuniform but small cavity pressure superimposed on uniform cavity pressure, the authors study the deformation of left ventricle under the effect of inner pressure. Assuming a linear stress-strain relation for the model and expanding the field quantities into a perturbation series, they obtain a set of linear differential equations. Then, employing a Fourier series expansion method, they solve the field equations under given boundary conditions. Finally, they study the displacement distribution by numerical means and compare the results with previous works. The paper is quite interesting and may find several readers working in ventricular mechanics.