Operator splitting and adaptive mesh refinement for the Luo-Rudy I model

We apply second-order operator splitting to the Luo-Rudy I model for electrical wave propagation in the heart. The purpose of the operator splitting is to separate the nonlinear but local reaction computations from the linear but globally coupled diffusion computations. This approach allows us to use local nonlinear iterations for the stiff nonlinear reactions and to solve global linear systems for the implicit treatment of diffusion. For computational efficiency, we use dynamically adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), involving hierarchies of unions of grid patches on distinct levels of refinement. The linear system for the discretization of the diffusion on the composite AMR grid is formulated via standard conforming finite elements on unions grid patches within a level of refinement and aligned mortar elements along interfaces between levels of refinement. The linear systems are solved iteratively by preconditioned conjugate gradients. Our preconditioner uses multiplicative domain decomposition between levels of refinement; the smoother involves algebraic additive domain decomposition between patches within a level of refinement, and Gauss-Seidel iteration within grid patches. Numerical results are presented in 1D and 2D, including spiral waves. © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Author John A. Trangenstein Mathematics