High-order fully well-balanced numerical methods for one-dimensional blood flow with discontinuous properties, friction and gravity

Abstract

We present well-balanced, high-order, semi-discrete numerical schemes for one-dimensional blood flow models with discontinuous mechanical properties and algebraic source terms representing friction and gravity. While discontinuities in model parameters are handled using the Generalized Hydrostatic Reconstruction, the presence of algebraic source terms implies that steady state solutions cannot always be computed analytically. In fact, steady states are defined by an ordinary differential equation that needs to be integrated numerically. Therefore, we resort on a numerical reconstruction operator to identify and, where appropriate, preserve steady states with an accuracy that depends on the reconstruction operator's numerical scheme. We extend our methods to deal with networks of vessels and show numerical results for single- and multiple-vessel tests, including a network of 118 vessels, demonstrating the capacity of the presented methods to outperform naive discretizations of the equations under study.