Design And Finite Element Analysis Of Artificial Heart Valve

In order to find a potentially reliable artificial heart valve, many researchers hadconcentrated their studies on the development of prosthesis similar in shape to thenatural valve. The advantages of the Ross-mitral procedure, which include freedomanticoagulation, improved hemodynamic performance and probable growth potential,make it possible for a perfect replacement. We designed a kind of artificial heartvalve's bracket which was used in Ross-mitral procedure in this paper.Firstly, after a thorough comparison, two types of the artificial heart valve'sbracket were serial designed by using Autocad software, then the solid model wasalso designed by using Pro/E. In order to have a good understand of the stresscondition of the artificial heart valve's bracket, we also discussed the hemodynamicof the artificial heart valve by comparing with the hemodynamic of the nature heartvalve. Finally, this thesis analyzes the mechanical properties of the bracket of theartificial bracket by 3D-FEA, the advanced theoretical mechanical analytic method.With the famous FEA software ANSYS, the finite element model of the artificialheart valve was built according to its characters and work conditions. Several kinds oftheories on stress and strain are discussed, and then by using ANSYS, the results ofstress on strain of the bracket are got.The result indicated that the most severe distortion and stress was placed at thetop joint between the leaflets and the bracket when the blood pressure levels acrossthe valve. Thus it will cause the fatigued failure of the artificial heart valve's bracket.In this paper, NiTi shape memory alloy was choiced as the durable material inthe manufacturing due to its good mechanical and biocompatibility.The study in this paper is a good try for the virtual design of artificial heart valve.It is also one of tendencies artificial heart valve design and manufacture and willimprove design and analysis levels of artificial heart valve. We expect that this workcould provide some medical references and comprehensive theoretic foundations forthe future research of artificial heart valve.