3D Printing-Assisted Energy Loss Testing of Artificial Aortic Heart Valves

With the development of additive manufacturing, 3D printing technology has become more common nowadays. We designed and 3D printed a cost-effective liquid fluid pressure measurement device that can convert liquid pressure to air pressure. Air pressure was measured by a low-cost manometer in this study. The device can measure the pressure drop across artificial aortic heart valves at different flow rate conditions. The main objective of this study is to utilize 3D printing technology to measure pressure loss through artificial aortic heart valves. From the measured pressure drop, the energy loss of flow that occurs through the artificial aortic heart valves can be estimated. In the experiment, both mechanical and biological (bovine skin) aortic heart valves have been tested at several different flow rate conditions. By doing so, we were able to measure energy loss at different flow rates through the valves to test which type and size of the heart valve have the lowest energy loss during operation. Lower energy loss of the blood through the valve should have a lower burden to a patients heart. This study provides an example of a new application of additive manufacturing in liquid fluid pressure measurement devices and showed an acceptable performance in the experiment.