On stabilized space-time FEM for anisotropic meshes: Incompressible Navier-Stokes equations and applications to blood flow in medical devices

In complex applications, such as the analysis of hydraulic performance of blood pumps (ventricular assist devices), the Navier-Stokes equations have to be discretized on very anisotropic meshes. If stabilized finite element formulations are applied, standard definitions of the stabilization parameter are usually not appropriate to handle elements with a high aspect ratio. If, in addition, rotating objects, moving meshes, or turbulence has to be considered in the simulation, further modifications of the stabilization procedure have to be applied. In this paper, we present stabilized space-time finite element formulations of the incompressible NavierStokes equations that show very good convergence properties on complex anisotropic meshes and lead to reasonable numerical accuracy in complex flows when compared with experimental data. Copyright (C) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.