ECCOMAS 2024

Experimental Validation and Uncertainty Analysis of Phase-Averaging for Transcatheter Heart Valve FSI Applications

  • Lozowy, Richard (Edwards Lifesciences)
  • Zhao, Tina (Edwards Lifesciences)

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Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), also known as Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), is a minimally invasive procedure used to treat patients with aortic stenosis, which is a condition with a narrowed aortic valve that doesn’t open fully. During the procedure, a new valve is inserted without removing the old, diseased valve. The TAVR procedure delivers a fully crimped replacement valve to the valve site through a catheter, without going through an open-heart procedure. Once the new valve is expanded, it pushes the native valve leaflets out of the way and the bioprosthetic valve takes over and starts regulating blood flow immediately. TAVR is available to patients in all risk categories and can be an effective option to improve quality of life in patients with aortic stenosis. Understanding the impact of TAVR device to mid or lower risk patient has become great importance. Because the native leaflets are not removed, flow field of the volume between the native leaflets and the transcatheter heart valve (THV) leaflets, also referred to as the neo-sinus, has attracted research interest of many. Research has been performed to corelate the risk of thrombus formation in the neo-sinus region. Thrombus is thought to be caused by a combination of endothelial injury, hypercoagulability, and hemodynamics. The hemodynamic factors could consist of stagnant blood flow in the neo-sinus region, elevated shear stress and turbulence. To design THV that mitigate hemodynamic risk factors, it is essential to have reliable and validated numerical models. In this paper the experimental validation and uncertainty quantification of a THV fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model will be presented. The FSI model has been validated against experimental test data. One of the challenges of analyzing THV hemodynamics lies in that the blood flow is both pulsatile and turbulent and as such, the instantaneous velocity does not repeat every pulse-cycle. However, flow statistics are stationary when taken at the same location within the period. To compute a sufficiently converged phase-average, statistic data from many pulse-cycles needs to be collected. The convergence uncertainty of the phase-average will be quantified for both the simulations and the experiments.