From an engineering standpoint, a person with a “good heart” possesses an organ that can produce a 60% change in volume as it contracts. Very little is actually known about the mechanical properties of the human heart. For Professor Jean-François Molinari, an object undergoing a large deformation like this is a perfect opportunity to apply constitutive modeling techniques. Not only is it a “multiphysics” problem, involving chemistry, biology, and mechanics, but it is also an optimization problem. What is the ideal shape of the heart? What is the ideal orientation pattern for the muscle fibers as they contract in response to an electrical pulse? Surgeons currently operate on patients with “poor hearts” (<30% volume change on contraction) by altering the organ from a roundish shape to a football shape. The surgery is highly empirical, and it is probable that finite element modeling can be used to optimize the procedure. Prof. Molinari is enthusiastic about the possibility of interacting with JHU’s Biomedical Engineering Department to apply his expertise in constitutive modeling to biomechanical problems.

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