Scalable parallel methods for monolithic coupling in fluid-structure interaction with application to blood flow modeling

We introduce and study numerically a scalable parallel finite element solver for the simulation of blood flow in compliant arteries. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are used to model the fluid and coupled to an incompressible linear elastic model for the blood vessel walls. Our method features an unstructured dynamic mesh capable of modeling complicated geometries, an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian framework that allows for large displacements of the moving fluid domain, monolithic coupling between the fluid and structure equations, and fully implicit time discretization. Simulations based on blood vessel geometries derived from patient-specific clinical data are performed on large super-computers using scalable Newton-Krylov algorithms preconditioned with an overlapping restricted additive Schwarz method that preconditions the entire fluid-structure system together. The algorithm is shown to be robust and scalable for a variety of physical parameters, scaling to hundreds of processors and millions of unknowns. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.