Biomechanics of Soft Tissues: From the Heart to the Cardiovascular System to the Brain

The lectures will include some essential ingredients of continuum mechanics, especially nonlinear elasticity. The focus is on the mechanical and structural modeling of fiber-reinforced materials, including collagen fiber dispersion with the inclusion of collagen cross-links and residual stresses. Applications to artery walls in health and disease such as aneurysms and aortic dissections will be illustrated. Lectures will also cover cardiac biomechanical modeling, touching on the nonlinear anisotropic and viscoelastic nature of the myocardium, the synthesis and integration of these concepts into whole-organ models, and the assimilation of image-based data for patient-specific modeling. Advanced topics on modeling the entire cardiovascular system, hemodynamics, engineered heart tissue and modeling will also be discussed. Vascular adaptation during disease and treatment will be discussed along with measurements of strain fields using imaging techniques and digital image correlation in soft tissues. The important area of parameter identification will be covered by full-field optical measurements using the virtual fields method in elasticity.

Another focus will be brain mechanics, including the unusual response of brain tissues and axons under loads, the shaping of the brain and skull during development, and the study of brain trauma and diseases. It will be shown that the gyrification patterns occurring in the human brain are the result of elastic instabilities. Finally, and most importantly, all participants will receive the code, datasets, and documented examples for brain, skin, and arteries, and may bring their own stretch-stress data for analysis.

Future directions and challenges will be identified in lectures for research in multiscale biomechanics and mechanobiology involving mechanical, biological, electrical and fluid-structure interactions.

Course leader

Gerhard A. Holzapfel, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Ray W. Ogden, University of Glasgow, UK

Target group

The Summer School is addressed to PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in biomedical engineering, biophysics, mechanical and civil engineering, applied mathematics and mechanics, materials science and physiology and more senior scientists and engineers (including some from relevant industries) whose interests are in the area of biomechanics and mechanobiology of soft biological tissues.

Course aim

The aim is to provide an up-to-date overview of biomechanical modeling, simulation and experimental methods on different length scales.

Credits info

upon request

Fee info

EUR 595: The fee covers the attendance at all lectures, and a book of lecture notes. In addition, lunch and light refreshments will be provided throughout the days; a guided city tour and welcome reception will also be included.