Mechanical analysis of mechanical aortic heart valve: Trileaflet versus bileaflet

Valvular heart disease is considered as an important problem of heart. The mechanical heart valve replacement is one of the methods used to treat valvular heart disease. There are many designs of mechanical heart valves including bileaflet and trileaflet valves. As the heart valve operates under the blood pressure conditions, it might be damaged or impaired. We aimed to design a trileaflet mechanical heart valve and compare with a bileaflet mechanical heart valve using mechanical analysis. Stress and strain on mechanical aortic heart valve, during opening and closing, were determined with a finite element analysis including deformation. Our simulation results showed that the maximum stress and strain, when valve opened, occurred at the hinge joint of leaflet in both trileaflet and bileaflet valves. But the stress concentration on the hinge joint in our designed trileaflet valve was less than that in the bileaflet valve. The leaflet deformation in trileaflet valve was lower compared to bileaflet valve. Our study suggested that geometry of leaflets and hinge joint play an important role in the stress and strain distributions occurred on heart valve including leaflets.