Modeling aortic valve closure under the action of a ventricular assist device

The support of a failing heart with pump devices has been an essential element in cardiac health care for several decades. It is therefore important to understand the left ventricular response to the pumping action of these devices when connected to the native heart. Furthermore, monitoring of aortic valve opening and closure is important in avoiding valve stenosis and thrombogenesis during pump support. This paper reports the first steps in simulating the effects of outlet pump pressure on aortic valve closure of the heart assisted by an implantable blood pump. A two-dimensional fluid structure interaction aortic valve model is presented with blood flow in left ventricular chamber using the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian Finite Element Method formulation to predict the AV closure during outflow of blood from the left ventricle into the left ventricular assist device (LVAD).