Micro-pillar sensor based wall-shear mapping in pulsating flows: In-situ calibration and measurements in an aortic heart-valve tester

Abstract

Accurate wall-shear stress (WSS) in-vitro measurements within complex geometries such as the human aortic arch under pulsatile flow are still difficult to achieve, meanwhile such data are important for classifying impacts of prosthetic valves on aortic walls. Micro-cantilever beams can serve to sense the WSS in such flows for applications in in-vitro flow tester. However, within pulsatile flows and complex 3D curved geometries such as the aortic arch, the flexible sensor structures are subject to oscillating boundary layer thickness and profile shape, which may not have been taken into account in the calibration procedure. The fluid–structure interaction is sensitive to these changes, thus reflecting also the flow-induced deflection of the sensor tip which is actually the sensing signal. We develop herein a methodology for in-situ calibration of the response of the sensors directly in the complex geometry of the aortic arch, assisted by reference data from numerical simulations of the flow under the same boundary conditions. For this procedure, a quick exchange of the heart valve in the tester with a tubular insert is done to provide a smooth contour in the curved aorta model. Arrays of 500 μm long micro-pillar WSS sensors in the aorta model are calibrated under physiological pulsatile flow and used then for mapping the WSS evolution in the arch induced by two different heart valve, showing their difference of impact. The developed methodology completes the in-house built in-vitro flow tester with a reliable WSS measurement technique and provides a unique hydrodynamic testing facility for heart valve prostheses and their impact on the WSS distal along the aortic walls.