Bifurcations in valveless pumping techniques from a coupled fluid-structure-electrophysiology model in heart development

TL;DR

This study models embryonic heart pumping by coupling electrophysiology and fluid-structure interaction, revealing bifurcations that lead to different pumping regimes including suction and peristaltic-like flows.

Contribution

It introduces a fully coupled electrophysiology-fluid-structure model that captures bifurcations in heart pumping dynamics without prescribed motion.

Findings

Bifurcation in action potential propagation dynamics.

Different pumping regimes including suction and peristaltic-like flows.

More bulk flow occurs in peristaltic-like pumping regime.

Abstract

We explore an embryonic heart model that couples electrophysiology and muscle-force generation to flow induced using a $2D$ fluid-structure interaction framework based on the immersed boundary method. The propagation of action potentials are coupled to muscular contraction and hence the overall pumping dynamics. In comparison to previous models, the electro-dynamical model does not use prescribed motion to initiate the pumping motion, but rather the pumping dynamics are fully coupled to an underlying electrophysiology model, governed by the FitzHugh-Nagumo equations. Perturbing the diffusion parameter in the FitzHugh-Nagumo model leads to a bifurcation in dynamics of action potential propagation. This bifurcation is able to capture a spectrum of different pumping regimes, with dynamic suction pumping and peristaltic-like pumping at the extremes. We find that more bulk flow is produced within the realm of peristaltic-like pumping.