Fluid–Structure Interaction methods for the progressive anatomical and artificial aortic valve stenosis

Abstract

Cardiovascular system diseases, as aortic valve stenosis, are the main cause of mortality and morbidity among patients. There is still a room for enhancement of the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, which will lead to improvement of the treatment. One of the remedies are the computer tools to support the medical diagnoses and prostheses design. The development of a procedure for modeling the aortic valves: anatomical tricuspid valve and artificial bileaflet valve, still is a very challenging task. In presented work, the application of the novel, advanced moving mesh model, that consists of the coupling of the dynamic mesh smoothing and the overset mesh technique, to speed up the computation and improve the convergence and stability was shown. The real 2D and 3D vasculature and valve geometries were created based on the echocardiography images available in literature. The calculations of anatomical and artificial valve models were performed for the various severity of the atherosclerosis — not previously published for the bileaflet mechanical valve. The impact of calcification process onto natural and artificial aortic valves was assessed and compared.