Heterogeneous multi-scale model

Dynamic coupling of high-performance computing models

Problem

Whole-blood simulations at organ scale cannot directly resolve every cell, yet microscale effects strongly influence rheology and transport. The project addresses how to couple both scales without making runtime prohibitive.

Approach

  • Combine a macroscale advection-diffusion blood model with local microscale cell-resolved simulations.
  • Compute effective transport and viscosity coefficients from microscale runs.
  • Reuse prior microscale results through a surrogate model over hematocrit and shear-rate space.
  • Spawn new microscale simulations only where extrapolation uncertainty is high.

Key finding

The heterogeneous multiscale formulation preserves key microscale-informed behavior while reducing the number of expensive local simulations needed over time.

Why it matters

This coupling strategy brings high-fidelity blood mechanics into larger domains where direct cell resolution is otherwise infeasible.

Outputs

  • Publication details are listed in the References section below.
  • Architecture and coupling overview are documented on this page.

References

2020

  1. A Heterogeneous Multi-scale Model for Blood Flow
    Benjamin Czaja, Gábor Závodszky, and Alfons Hoekstra
    In International Conference on Computational Science, 2020