Artificial Textile Reinforced Tubular Aortic Heart Valves—Multi-scale Modelling and Experimental Validation

Tissue engineered valvular implants are in development as living and remodelling prostheses to replace damaged native valves. To improve the mechanical properties of the valve, textile is used as a reinforcing scaffold. To predict the behaviour and optimize the structure of such composites, it is necessary to understand the behaviour of the underlying components. The current study seeks to test a multi-scale approach often used in the field of composites to evaluate the behaviour of knitted textile reinforced elastomeric composites. The complex textile structure is divided into simplified models at different levels/structural units. Virtual experiments are conducted at each of these levels and their responses are fit to appropriate isotropic and anisotropic hyperelastic material models. The simulation responses obtained by conducting virtual experiments on the repeating unit cell (RUC) of the composite are then compared with experimental results, resulting in good agreement. After experimental validation, the multi-scale approach is used to predict the behaviour of artificial heart valves.