Analysis of Flow Field in Mechanical Aortic Bileaflet Heart Valves Using Finite Volume Method

Under physiological conditions, the opening and closing of the leaflets of an implanted artificial heart valve (AHV) affects the blood components and therefore may cause various complications to the patient such as hemolysis or platelet activation. In this paper, a computational fluid model is presented. The regional distribution of flow shear stress in an AHV is analyzed using computational fluid dynamics and AHV performance is evaluated in terms of the variation of flow velocity and pressure when blood passes the leaflets in the aortic valve. The results suggest that for the design of a mechanical AHV, the maximum opening angle and internal orifice diameter should be increased to improve the fluid structure interaction and decrease the possibility of damage to blood components. Finally, the fluid stress distribution of the AHV leaflet structure was calculated and analyzed under pulsating flow conditions.