Biomedical Engineering Reference
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Fig. 8 Top: cat mesenteric valve (reproduced from [
61
]). Bottom: 2D simulation of opening
lymphatic valve using Fluent
[
13
-
15
] or a funnel-like structure [
22
]. Meanwhile, recent work based on 3D
reconstruction of images from confocal multiphoton microscopy suggests a bi-
leaflet structure anchored at the walls [
60
]. Macdonald [
27
] attempted to model a
valve as a 2D bileaflet with the commercial CFD code Fluent; the valve leaflets
were represented by rigid structures with predefined motion, enabling the inves-
tigation of the response of the flow to the opening and closing of the leaflets. This,
combined with experimental data on the valve behaviour, formed the basis for the
empirical valve model used in [
28
]. Typical results are shown in Fig.
8
, from
which the flow resistance for various degrees of opening could be calculated.
Recently, Bertram et al. [
5
] have attempted to refine the valve modelling within
a lumped-parameter chain model. This modelled the valve behaviour more
smoothly than a simple on-off diode, with a resistance which ramped smoothly:
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