We describe a novel approach based on operator splitting for fluid-structure interaction between blood flow and vascular walls. This approach successfully deals with the difficulties associated with the “added mass effect”, which is known to be the cause of numerical instabilities in fluid-structure interaction problems involving fluid and structure of comparable densities.

In this talk, we will discuss the main ideas of this novel operator splitting approach. A stability result will be proved on a simple benchmark problem, and numerical results will be presented.