3D dynamic simulation of crack propagation in extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy

Some experimental observations of Shock Wave Lithotripsy(SWL), which include 3D dynamic crack propagation, are simulated with the aim of reproducing fragmentation of kidney stones with SWL. Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is the fragmentation of kidney stones by focusing an ultrasonic pressure pulse onto the stones. 3D models with fine discretization are used to accurately capture the high amplitude shear shock waves. For solving the resulting large scale dynamic crack propagation problem, PDS-FEM is used; it provides numerically efficient failure treatments. With a distributed memory parallel code of PDS-FEM, experimentally observed 3D photoelastic images of transient stress waves and crack patterns in cylindrical samples are successfully reproduced. The numerical crack patterns are in good agreement with the experimental ones, quantitatively. The results shows that the high amplitude shear waves induced in solid, by the lithotriptor generated shock wave, play a dominant role in stone fragmentation.