Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation of Artificial Heart Valve Considering Open State of Cardiac Cycle

The dynamic finite element method with the fluid-structure interaction was used to investigate the deformation behavior of a newly developed artificial heart valve. To reproduce the opening movements of tri-leaflets of the valve during the half cardiac cycle, a time-dependent blood velocity was used as the boundary condition of the fluid domain. The nonslip boundary condition was also chosen for the tri-leaflets to ensure the viscous effect between the blood and the leaflet surfaces, while the free slip boundary condition was chosen for the cylindrical wall to ignore such viscous effect. The valve was assumed to be made from a natural tissue and a linear elastic material was assumed as the material model. The blood was assumed to be incompressible and Newtonian fluid. It was found that the valve was easily open when it came into contact with blood flow, taking only 0.3 seconds to go from fully closed to fully open. The blood flow was also found to be stable with a laminar state and free of turbulence.