A self-contact electromechanical framework for intestinal motility
摘要
This study introduces a comprehensive multiphysics and multiscale modeling framework for simulating intestinal motility, explicitly incorporating the effects of contact mechanics. The proposed approach couples finite elasticity electromechanics, which captures the microstructural architecture and mechanical behavior of the intestinal wall, with tissue-level electrophysiology, enabling the representation of slow wave propagation and active contractile dynamics. To model mechanical interactions accurately, the framework integrates a self-contact detection algorithm that combines a nearest-neighbor search strategy with the penalty method, ensuring robust enforcement of non-interpenetration constraints. In addition, the model accommodates inhomogeneous boundary conditions that simulate the mechanical influence of adjacent organs on the intestinal tissue. The active strain governing equations are solved via a staggered finite element scheme, implemented within the open-source