Abstract
There are various reports on the fracture of mechanical heart valves implanted in human or animals, and they are pointed out that problems are induced by an erosion of disk surface, due to a cavitation effect. We have been investigating this mechanism using our original accelerated fatigue tester, and it was found that erosion was enhanced by a compliance effect in the test circuit. In this study, effects of compliance value and location on erosion were discussed, while disk closing velocity was measured by a high speed video camera. It was clarified that faster closing velocity was resulting in a enhancement of erosion on the disk surface.
