Biomechanics & Biofluids

Forces in bones and joints, flow in vessels. Stress, strain and elasticity, joint and muscle forces, tissue viscoelasticity and gait, pipe flow, and blood-flow mechanics behind stents, valves and heart pumps.

• Stress — Stress is internal force per unit area. Learn normal (tensile/compressive) stress, bearing stress, allowable stress and factor of safety, stress concentrations, and thin-walled pressure vessels.
• Elasticity — Elasticity is a material's ability to spring back. Learn Hooke's law, Young's, shear and bulk moduli, axial deformation δ = PL/AE, stiffness, thermal stress and composite bars.
• Biomechanics: Joints, Bones, Tissues & Gait — Mechanics of the living body. Learn free-body diagrams of joints, muscle forces and moment arms, joint reaction forces, bone structure and mechanical properties, viscoelasticity of soft tissues (creep, stress relaxation, Kelvin–Voigt/Maxwell models), cartilage lubrication, gait analysis and ground reaction forces, and applications in implants, prosthetics and sports — with Python computing hip joint forces and bone stress.
• Pipe Flow — Friction and fittings cost pressure. Learn the Darcy–Weisbach equation, friction factor (laminar 64/Re, Colebrook, Moody chart), minor losses (K-values), system curves and how to size pipes and pumps together.
• Biofluid Mechanics: Blood Flow & Cardiovascular Devices — How blood moves and how devices change it. Learn blood as a non-Newtonian fluid (shear thinning, haematocrit, Fåhræus–Lindqvist), Poiseuille flow and the r⁴ law, stenosis and pressure drop, Reynolds and Womersley numbers for pulsatile flow, wall shear stress and atherosclerosis, pulse-wave velocity, and devices — stents, heart valves, VADs, dialysers, oxygenators — with Python analysing a stenosed artery.