Ameliorating the hemodynamics of Mechanical Heart Valves via leaflet design alteration*

Mechanical heart valves (MHVs) are known to induce physiologically adverse flow patterns in the aorta. The flow due to MHVs consists of laminar-to-turbulent transition in every cardiac cycle. The coherent structures such as the Burgers vortices appear downstream of the valve in the near-peak to early-deceleration period which cascade down to multitudes of three-dimensional vortical structures in the later phases. This complex and rapid transition of flow features induces higher levels of platelet activation state (or blood damage) in MHVs. The present work attempts to improve the flow features of MHVs via the leaflet design alteration so that the detrimental effects such as blood damage be reduced. We use an in-house immersed boundary solver with fluid structure interaction to obtain the coupled effect of the moving leaflet and fluid flow. Results show that the modified leaflet design incurs smoother flow features, reduced levels of turbulence, and lower blood damage compared to the control MHVs.