Abstract:
The biomechanics of the rumen play an important role in the digestion of plant matter in animals such as cows and sheep, but are poorly understood. Computational modelling will be useful in explaining the role of anatomy and contractions in the mixing and outflow of feed. We report on the development of a geometric model of the sheep rumen. A plaster cast of an excised rumen was produced and imaged. The resulting point cloud was used to create a cubic Hermite surface mesh that will be used for simulating rumen contractions and flow.