Present-day designs of mechanical prosthetic heart valves (MPHV) are far from ideal and significant complications such as hemolysis, platelet destruction, and thromboembolism-often arise after their implantation. These pathological conditions are believed to be caused by the exposure of blood elements to excessive hemodynamic stresses induced by the complex, turbulent flow field in the vicinity of the mechanical prosthesis. Therefore, a critical prerequisite for improving and further refining existing MPHV designs is the in-depth understanding of the flow fields they induce. A 5-year research plan is proposed herein aimed at developing and validating a state-of-the art numerical simulation tool for obtaining quantitatively accurate predictions of all flow phenomena occurring in prosthetic valves.
The specific aims for the proposed research program are: 1) To develop a highly accurate and efficient numerical method for simulating unsteady, three-dimensional flows in realistic bileaflet MPHV geometries; 2) To develop and implement in MPHV flow simulations advanced turbulence closure models capable of accurate predictions of transition to turbulence and relaminarization in pulsatile flows at physiological Reynolds numbers; 3) To conduct detailed laboratory experiments to obtain comprehensive data sets and use these data sets to validate and fine-tune the CFD model; and 4) To apply the CFD method to study in detail the structure of turbulence in bi-leaflet MPHV designs and explore its implications to clinically observed complications. The proposed CFD method will revolutionize current valve design and testing practices. The method will be capable of yielding descriptions of the valve flow fields at a level of detail not currently accessible by experiments alone, leading to substantial time and cost savings during the research and development phase. This work will also lead to a computational framework for assessing the likelihood that implantation of a given MPHV design may lead to thromboembolic complications.
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