Biomedical fluid mechanics and fluid–structure interaction

Abstract

In 2013, we celebrated the 70th Birthday of Thomas J.R. Hughes, a leader in computational mechanics.With this special issue, we recognize Tom Hughes’s contributions and impact in biomedical fluid mechanics and fluid–structure interaction (FSI). Tom Hughes is a pioneer in computational biomechanics, going all theway back to his PhDwork on arterial pulse propagation in 1973, with his landmark work with Charles Taylor and Chris Zarins on patient-specific arterial fluid mechanics modeling in 1996, and with the more recent innovations he brought to computational biomechanics with isogeometric analysis. Inspired by Tom Hughes’s work and ideas in computational biomechanics, his students, associates and friends have also beenmaking significant contributions in this area of computational mechanics and advancing the state-of-the-art. We are proud to have a contribution also from Tom Hughes in this special issue. The special issue a collection of state-of-the-art papers on biomedical fluid mechanics and FSI and closely related topics, with much emphasis on patient-specific modeling. Significant emphasis is placed also on modeling of biomedical devices, such as ventricular assist devices (VADs) and artificial heart valves. While most of the articles focus on the spatial scales at the organ level (e.g., scales of aortic valves and large blood vessels), computational FSI techniques for