A Parallel High-Order Fictitious Domain Approach for Biomechanical Applications

Abstract

The focus of this contribution is on the parallelization of the Finite Cell Method (FCM) applied for biomechanical simulations of human femur bones. The FCM is a high-order fictitious domain method that combines the simplicity of Cartesian grids with the beneficial properties of hierarchical approximation bases of higher order for an increased accuracy and reliablility of the simulation model. A pre-computation scheme for the numerically expensive parts of the finite cell model is presented that shifts a significant part of the analysis update to a setup phase of the simulation, thus increasing the update rate of linear analyses with time-varying geometry properties to a range that even allows user interactive simulations of high quality. Paralellization of both parts, the pre-computation of the model stiffness and the update phase of the simulation is simplified due to a simple and undeformed cell structure of the computation domain. A shared memory parallelized implementation of the method is presented and its performance is tested for a biomedical application of clinical relevance to demonstrate the applicability of the presented method.