MESH CONSTRUCTION FROM MEDICAL IMAGING FOR MULTIPHYSICS SIMULATION: HEAT TRANSFER AND FLUID FLOW IN COMPLEX GEOMETRIES

Medical imaging techniques, such as MRI and CT scanning, are valuable tools for reconstructing the geometry of complex objects. Much effort has been applied in the biomechanical research field to develop image processing software capable of generating valid meshes for computational continuum mechanics packages from such scans. To date these techniques have largely been applied to computation of single physical processes, e.g., fluid flow or stress analysis. We describe techniques for image to mesh conversion which permit the creation of multiple meshes for distinct volumes of the object, ensuring absolute conformity between the meshes on shared boundaries and allowing computation of coupled physical processes on distinct subregions of the total volume. Such techniques have application well beyond the biomedical field, and we illustrate the possibilities with coupled fluid flow/heat transfer calculations for an apple pie and a metal foam.