Numerical Investigation of Hemodynamics in a Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valve using an Implicit FSI Based on the ALE Approach

Human heart valves diseased by congenital heart defects, rheumatic fever, bacterial infection, cancer may cause stenosis or insufficiency in the valves. Treatment may be with medication but often involves valve repair or replacement (insertion of an artificial heart valve). Bileaflet mechanical heart valves (BMHVs) are widely implanted to replace the diseased heart valves, but still suffer from complications such as hemolysis, platelet activation, tissue overgrowth and device failure. These complications are closely related to both flow characteristics through the valves and leaflet dynamics. In this study, the physiological flow interacting with the moving leaflets in a bileaflet mechanical heart valve (BMHV) is simulated with a strongly coupled implicit fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method which is newly organized based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach and the dynamic mesh method (remeshing) in FLUENT. The simulated results are in good agreement with previous experimental studies. This study shows the applicability of the present FSI model to the complicated physics interacting between fluid flow and moving boundary.