Characteristics of Pulsatile Blood Flow Through the Curved Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valve Installed in Two Different Types of Blood Vessels: Velocity and Pressure of Blood Flow

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the flow fields of blood flowing through the curved bileaflet mechanical heart valve. A numerical analysis was carried out with the fluid-structure interaction between the blood flow and the motion of leaflets in two different types of blood vessels (type A, with sinus blood vessel, and type B, without sinus blood vessel). When the leaflet was fully opened, a fluttering phenomenon was detected in association with the blood flow, and recirculation flows were observed in the sinus region of the blood vessel for type A. During the closing phase, regurgitation was formed between the ring and the edge of the each leaflet for both types. When the leaflet came into contact with the valve ring at the end of the closing phase, rebound of the leaflet occurred. In consideration of the entire domain, the pressure drop occurs mainly in the valve region. The present results showed tendencies similar to those obtained by previous experiments for blood flow and contribute to the development of the curved bileaflet mechanical heart valve prostheses.

A fast strong coupling algorithm for the partitioned fluid–structure interaction simulation of BMHVs

“…However, the use of remeshing (and thus interpolation) introduces artificial diffusivity and can become expensive for complex three-dimensional geometries. Several studies used the ALE approach to simulate the dynamics of the ATS Open Pivot TM Standard Heart Valve (Dumont et al , 2007, the St. Jude Medical TM BMHV (Penrose et al 2002;Redaelli et al 2004;Dumont et al 2007;Guivier et al 2007Guivier et al , 2009Nobili et al 2007Nobili et al , 2008Choi et al 2009;Hong et al 2009) and other valve types (Makhijani et al 1997;Vierendeels et al 2005Vierendeels et al , 2007Bang et al 2006;Morsi et al 2007). Secondly, one can classify each FSI simulation by the use of a partitioned solver or a monolithic solver.…”

“…This is in contrast to the partitioned approach, which solves the flow and the structural problem separately and, therefore, mostly uses different specialised solvers. The partitioned approach is used to simulate heart valves in Makhijani et al (1997), Penrose et al (2002), Redaelli et al (2004), Dumont et al (2005Dumont et al ( , 2007, Vierendeels et al (2005Vierendeels et al ( , 2007, Bang et al (2006), Guivier et al (2007Guivier et al ( , 2009 , Nobili et al (2007, Nobili et al ( , 2008, Morsi et al (2007), Tai et al (2007), Borazjani et al (2008), Dos Santos et al (2008), Astorino et al (2009), Choi et al (2009), De Tullio et al (2009), Hong et al (2009 and, finally, Xia et al (2009). In order to obtain the interaction between the fluid and the structure, data exchange at the fluid-structure interface and a coupling scheme between the separated solvers are needed.…”

Application of a strong FSI coupling scheme for the numerical simulation of bileaflet mechanical heart valve dynamics: study of wall shear stress on the valve leaflets

“…Therefore, there is a clear advantage in the use of a variable time step size which allows a relatively large time step size when the valve is at rest, and a smaller time step size when the valve is moving, since it decreases the total number of time steps in a time cycle and thus lowers the computational cost. For these reasons, a variable time step size is commonly used when simulating heart valves (Bang et al 2006;Choi et al 2009;De Tullio et al 2009). When the leaflets are moving, the maximum allowable time step size is restricted by the maximum allowable mesh motion, and thus by grid characteristics.…”

State-Of-The-Art Methods for the Numerical Simulation of Aortic BMHVs

“…However, the use of remeshing (and thus interpolation) introduces artificial diffusivity and can become expensive for complex three-dimensional geometries. Several studies have used the ALE approach to simulate the dynamics of the ATS Open Pivot TM Standard Heart Valve (Dumont et al, , 2007, the St. Jude Medical TM BMHV (Penrose et al, 2002;Redaelli et al, 2004;Dumont et al, 2007;Guivier et al, 2007Guivier et al, , 2009Nobili et al, 2007Nobili et al, , 2008Choi et al, 2009;Hong et al, 2009), and other valve types (Makhijani et al, 1997;Vierendeels et al, 2005Vierendeels et al, , 2007Bang et al, 2006;Morsi et al, 2007).…”

“…This is in contrast to the partitioned approach, which solves the flow and the structural problem separately and, therefore, mostly uses different specialized solvers. The partitioned approach is used to simulate heart valves in Makhijani et al (1997), Penrose et al (2002), Redaelli et al (2004), Dumont et al (2005Dumont et al ( , 2007, Vierendeels et al (2005Vierendeels et al ( , 2007, Bang et al (2006), Guivier et al (2007Guivier et al ( , 2009, Nobili et al (2007Nobili et al ( , 2008, Morsi et al (2007), Tai et al (2007), Borazjani et al (2008) In order to obtain the interaction between the fluid and the structure, data exchange at the fluid-structure interface and a coupling scheme between the separated solvers are needed. Unfortunately, not every coupling scheme converges quickly.…”