A computational fluid dynamics model for the aortic valve in the context of the Ross procedure

The aortic root is at the core of many heart diseases and a subject of medical research which has been increasing rapidly since the last decade, as evidenced by the growing number of studies and surgical techniques to repair or replace the aortic valve. This aortic valve by a mechanism complex opening / closing based on three sigmoidal cusps, ensures a unidirectional flow. To progress in the understanding of the biomechanics of the aortic valve, a global approach integrating patient data (DICOM angioscanners), and numerical simulation of unsteady mechanisms of fluid-structure interaction is now necessary.

The purpose of this PhD is to use numerical simulation of the hemodynamics of the aortic valve in the specific case of the Ross procedure, which consists in replacing the aortic valve by the patient’s own pulmonary valve. Despite well-identified advantages of this surgery operation in terms of quality-of-life improvements, long-term post-surgery issues still need to be characterized and better understood in a large context involving both clinical aspects, hemodynamics and biomechanical properties of the valve. The unsteady velocity and pressure fields of blood within one and many cardiac cycles, as well as the wall shear stress distributions in pathological conditions will be analyzed to improve the current operative techniques of surgical replacement of the aortic valve in the context of the Ross procedure.