An anisotropic constitutive model for immersogeometric fluid-structure interaction analysis of bioprosthetic heart valves

This paper considers an anisotropic hyperelastic soft tissue model, originally proposed for native valve tissue and referred to herein as the Lee-Sacks model, in an isogeometric thin shell analysis framework that can be readily combined with immersogeometric fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis for high-fidelity simulations of bioprosthetic heart valves (BHVs) interacting with blood flow. We find that the Lee-Sacks model is well-suited to reproduce the anisotropic stress-strain behavior of the cross-linked bovine pericardial tissues that are commonly used in BHVs. An automated procedure for parameter selection leads to an instance of the Lee-Sacks model that matches biaxial stress-strain data from the literature more closely, over a wider range of strains, than other soft tissue models. The relative simplicity of the Lee-Sacks model is attractive for computationally-demanding applications such as FSI analysis and we use the model to demonstrate how the presence and direction of material anisotropy affect the FSI dynamics of BHV leaflets.