Design and Analysis of Prosthetic Heart Valves and Assessing the Effects of Leaflet Design on the Mechanical Attributes of the Valves

Jaafar Ghanbari,Amirhossein Zakeri,Amirhossein Dehparvar

doi:10.3389/fmech.2022.764034

Jaafar Ghanbari, Amirhossein Zakeri + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fmech.2022.764034

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Abstract

Prosthetic heart valves are commonly used as a treatment for aortic valve deficiencies. The performance of these prosthetic valves should be in accordance with the natural heart valve with respect to opening and closing, blood flow, and vortex formation. These performance parameters depend on the design of leaflets and overall geometrical parameters of the valve. To better understand the effects of leaflet design on the performance of the valve, we have carried out fully coupled fluid–structure interaction analyses of opening and closing of prosthetic heart valves with various leaflet designs. Maximum stress, valve opening, and flow stream pattern are obtained for different valve designs and used to assess the performance of the valves. The results show that the stress and the valve opening depend on the curvature and the inclination of the leaflets. A 3D model is designed based on the obtained results, and a full FSI analysis is performed to assess its performance. The results show that the presented design gives better values for valve opening area and leaflet stresses than that in the published data.

Highlights

Heart valve diseases like valvular stenosis or valvular insufficiency are a significant cause of global mortality, especially in Western countries
The results show that a larger slope at the skirt of the valve results in a larger valve opening area
Fluid-structure interaction simulations are promising for design cycle of the prosthetic heart valves because of the detained information that are obtained by them

Summary

Introduction

Heart valve diseases like valvular stenosis or valvular insufficiency are a significant cause of global mortality, especially in Western countries. The mitral valve controls the blood flow into the ventricle and has two leaflets, and the aortic valve controls the blood flow into the aorta and has three leaflets These valves operate passively by their leaflet movements (deformations) merely by the pressure gradient in the blood flow during a cardiac cycle. Animal originated valves, which are called biological heart valves, are mainly bovine or porcine valves which are chemically treated to adapt human body (Liao et al, 1992). These valves are susceptible to tissue degeneration and calcification and, as a result, subject to failure 10–15 years after implantation (Siddiqui et al, 2009). Mechanical prosthetic heart valves solve this shortcoming of biological valves, and because of their durability, some studies (Zakaria et al, 2017) show that almost 60% of worldwide annual heart valve replacements use mechanical heart valves

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