Mechanical Properties of Heart Valves

PI: Karen May-Newman, Ph.D.

Heart valve leaflets are compliant soft tissues that exhibit nonlinear, anisotropic material properties. The behavior of these tissues can be accurately modeled with a three-coefficient, exponential strain energy function of the invariants of a transversely isotropic material. This formulation has been used to describe the biomechanical properties of the mitral valve, aortic valve, and in our latest study, the pulmonary valve.

Publications

- May-Newman, K. and Yin, F.C., “A constitutive law for mitral valve tissue” ASME J. Biomech. Eng, 120:38-47, 1998.
- May-Newman, K., C. Lam and F. C-P. Yin. “A hyperelastic constitutive law for aortic valve tissue”, ASME J. Biomech. Eng, 131(8):081009, 2009.

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