Effect of the curvature of elastic plates on the evolution of pulsatile flow fields

The flow field around curved elastic plates is experimentally investigated under pulsatile flow conditions. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used together with a phase-locking technique, in order to measure the velocities. Particular emphasis is placed on the viscous stresses and their local maxima, which are analyzed and discussed in detail. It is observed that the rate-of-strain, the vorticity, and the stress fields, attain higher local values as the curvature is increased. Moreover, the peak values of these quantities occur near the mid-cycle (i.e. at t/T~0.5) and have slower decay rates in the case of curved plates. This study is motivated by the need to understand the fluid-structure interactions in the context of prosthetic heart valve design.