No label defined (Q4350098)

This contribution combines a mechanical model of heart contraction with a model of the electrical activation process, and describes their, mainly numerical, solution. The mechanical aspect describes the changing heart geometry in the framework of continuum mechanics. This involves quantities such as stress and strain tensors, which vary slowly in time and space; the resulting equations are solved with a finite element Galerkin method. The equations governing electrical activation, on the other hand, involve a number of scalar quantities, such as the membrane potential or channel gating variables, which change on a much smaller scale in time and space. They are superimposed on the mechanical system in that they are defined in material coordinates, and are solved with a collocation method. The article is partly tutorial in style. In particular, it covers the ingredients of electro-mechanical computation in a ``pedestrian'' way, with many examples worked out. It is thus also accessible to the non-specialist. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0867.92011].