The fluid mechanics of the aortic valve

The closure mechanism of the human aortic valve is investigated experimentally with a rigid-walled model placed in a pulsatile water-tunnel. It is shown that the valve is controlled by a fluid feed-back system incorporating a stagnation point at the downstream end of each sinus and a trapped vortex within it, and that threequarters of the valve's closure is accomplished during forward flow, requiring only very little reversed flow to seal it. The experiments are complemented by solutions of the inviscid-flow equations, based on a Hill spherical vortex model.