A numerical analysis of the blood flow around the Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valves with different rotational implantation angles

The effects of implantation angles of Bileaflet Mechanical Heart Valves (BMHVs) on the blood flow and the leaflet motion are investigated in this paper. The physiological blood flow interacting with the moving leaflets of a BMHV is simulated with a strongly coupled implicit Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) method based on the Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach and the dynamic mesh method (remeshing) in Fluent. BMHVs are widely used to be implanted to replace the diseased heart valves, but the patients would suffer from some complications such as hemolysis, platelet activation, tissue overgrowth and device failure. These complications are closely related to both the flow characteristics near the valves and the leaflet dynamics. The current numerical model is validated against a previous experimental study. The numerical results show that as the rotation angle of BMHV is increased the degree of asymmetry of the blood flow and the leaflet motion is increased, which may lead to an unbalanced force acting on the BMHVs. This study shows the applicability of the FSI model for the interaction between the blood flow and the leaflet motion in BMHVs.