Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Item
    Computational modelling and simulation of cancer growth and migration within a 3D heterogeneous tissue: The effects of fibre and vascular structure
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2019) Macnamara, Cicely K.; Caiazzo, Alfonso; Ramis-Conde, Ignacio; Chaplain, Mark A.J.
    The term cancer covers a multitude of bodily diseases, broadly categorised by having cells which do not behave normally. Since cancer cells can arise from any type of cell in the body, cancers can grow in or around any tissue or organ making the disease highly complex. Our research is focused on understanding the specific mechanisms that occur in the tumour microenvironment via mathematical and computational modeling. We present a 3D individual-based model which allows one to simulate the behaviour of, and spatio-temporal interactions between, cells, extracellular matrix fibres and blood vessels. Each agent (a single cell, for example) is fully realised within the model and interactions are primarily governed by mechanical forces between elements. However, as well as the mechanical interactions we also consider chemical interactions, for example, by coupling the code to a finite element solver to model the diffusion of oxygen from blood vessels to cells. The current state of the art of the model allows us to simulate tumour growth around an arbitrary blood-vessel network or along the striations of fibrous tissue.
  • Item
    Modeling, simulation, and optimization of geothermal energy production from hot sedimentary aquifers
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2019) Blank, Laura; Meneses Rioseco, Ernesto; Wilbrandt, Ulrich; Caiazzo, Alfonso
    Geothermal district heating development has been gaining momentum in Europe with numerous deep geothermal installations and projects currently under development. With the increasing density of geothermal wells, questions related to the optimal and sustainable reservoir exploitation become more and more important. A quantitative understanding of the complex thermo-hydraulic interaction between tightly deployed geothermal wells in heterogeneous temperature and permeability fields is key for a maximum sustainable use of geothermal resources. Motivated by the geological settings of the Upper Jurassic aquifer in the Greater Munich region, we develop a computational model based on finite element analysis and gradient-free optimization to simulate groundwater flow and heat transport in hot sedimentary aquifers, and investigate numerically the optimal positioning and spacing of multi-well systems. Based on our numerical simulations, net energy production from deep geothermal reservoirs in sedimentary basins by smart geothermal multi-well arrangements provides significant amounts of energy to meet heat demand in highly urbanized regions. Our results show that taking into account heterogeneous permeability structures and variable reservoir temperature may drastically affect the results in the optimal configuration. We demonstrate that the proposed numerical framework is able to efficiently handle generic geometrical and geologocal configurations, and can be thus flexibly used in the context of multi-variable optimization problems. Hence, this numerical framework can be used to assess the extractable geothermal energy from heterogeneous deep geothermal reservoirs by the optimized deployment of smart multi-well systems.
  • Item
    Displacement and pressure reconstruction from magnetic resonance elastography images: Application to an in silico brain model
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2022) Galarce Marín, Felipe; Tabelow, Karsten; Polzehl, Jörg; Papanikas, Christos Panagiotis; Vavourakis, Vasileios; Lilaj, Ledia; Sack, Ingolf; Caiazzo, Alfonso
    This paper investigates a data assimilation approach for non-invasive quantification of intracranial pressure from partial displacement data, acquired through magnetic resonance elastography. Data assimilation is based on a parametrized-background data weak methodology, in which the state of the physical system tissue displacements and pressure fields is reconstructed from partially available data assuming an underlying poroelastic biomechanics model. For this purpose, a physics-informed manifold is built by sampling the space of parameters describing the tissue model close to their physiological ranges, to simulate the corresponding poroelastic problem, and compute a reduced basis. Displacements and pressure reconstruction is sought in a reduced space after solving a minimization problem that encompasses both the structure of the reduced-order model and the available measurements. The proposed pipeline is validated using synthetic data obtained after simulating the poroelastic mechanics on a physiological brain. The numerical experiments demonstrate that the framework can exhibit accurate joint reconstructions of both displacement and pressure fields. The methodology can be formulated for an arbitrary resolution of available displacement data from pertinent images. It can also inherently handle uncertainty on the physical parameters of the mechanical model by enlarging the physics-informed manifold accordingly. Moreover, the framework can be used to characterize, in silico, biomarkers for pathological conditions, by appropriately training the reduced-order model. A first application for the estimation of ventricular pressure as an indicator of abnormal intracranial pressure is shown in this contribution.