Fluid-Structure Interaction in the Aortic Heart Valve

Introduction The opening and closing behavior of the valve is a delicate interaction between blood flow and geometrical and stiffness properties of the heart valve leaflets and aortic root. Numerical analysis of the opening and closing behavior is complicated by the three-dimensional finite motion of the very flexible leaflets in a compliant system of fluid and structure. Fluid-structure interaction models of the heart valve have been developed before, e.g. see Peskin & McQueen [1] and Horsten [2]. However, none of these models was able to analyse the physiological condition in which the valve functions because of numerical artefacts. The Fictitious Domain/Arbitrary Lagrange-Euler method is introduced, which allows numerical modeling of valves under physiological conditions.