Influence of leaflet thickness on deformation behavior of a 3D-printed training heart valve for an implantation training bench

Abstract

High-fidelity physical simulators are essential for transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) training. While additive manufacturing enables patient-specific fabrication, standard isotropic 3D-printing materials (e.g., Formlabs Elastic 50A Resin) fail to replicate the anisotropic biomechanics of native valves. Consequently, direct geometric replication causes synthetic stenosis and unphysiological flow resistance. To overcome this, we developed an automated computational pipeline to optimize the leaflet thickness of a 3Dprinted aortic valve. The geometry is parameterized via analytical tensor-product B-spline surfaces, ensuring exact offsets and robust conformal discretization. Non-linear shell simulations (CalculiX) were driven by experimentally characterized material properties (E = 2.0 MPa) and boundary conditions acquired from a mock circulatory loop. A systematic parametric grid search mapped the inverse relationship between leaflet thickness and systolic Geometric Orifice Area (GOA). The optimization identified an ideal thickness (t*= 0.8 mm) that structurally compensates for isotropic material stiffness, restoring physiological opening kinematics. This experimental-computational framework demonstrates that macroscopic geometric tuning effectively replicates realistic valve behavior in synthetic surgical training simulators.