Skip to content
BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter September 22, 2018

Fluid-structure interaction of heart valve dynamics in comparison to finite-element analysis

  • Finja Borowski EMAIL logo , Michael Sämann , Sylvia Pfensig , Carolin Wüstenhagen , Robert Ott , Sebastian Kaule , Stefan Siewert , Niels Grabow , Klaus-Peter Schmitz and Michael Stiehm

Abstract

An established therapy for aortic valve stenosis and insufficiency is the transcatheter aortic valve replacement. By means of numerical simulation the valve dynamics can be investigated to improve the valve prostheses performance. This study examines the influence of the hemodynamic properties on the valve dynamics utilizing fluidstructure interaction (FSI) compared with results of finiteelement analysis (FEA). FEA and FSI were conducted using a previously published aortic valve model combined with a new developed model of the aortic root. Boundary conditions for a physiological pressurization were based on measurements of ventricular and aortic pressure from in vitro hydrodynamic studies of a commercially available heart valve prosthesis using a pulse duplicator system. A linear elastic behavior was assumed for leaflet material properties and blood was specified as a homogeneous, Newtonian incompressible fluid. The type of fluid domain discretization can be described with an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation. Comparison of significant points of time and the leaflet opening area were used to investigate the valve opening behavior of both analyses. Numerical results show that total valve opening modelled by FEA is faster compared to FSI by a factor of 5. In conclusion the inertia of the fluid, which surrounds the valve leaflets, has an important influence on leaflet deformation. Therefore, fluid dynamics should not be neglected in numerical analysis of heart valve prostheses.

Published Online: 2018-09-22
Published in Print: 2018-09-01

© 2018 the author(s), published by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Downloaded on 29.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cdbme-2018-0063/html
Scroll to top button