This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Some of the best engineers and inventors are copycats. They look at how the natural world solves complex problems and use those mechanisms as the basis for innovations.
But Mother Nature doesn't always give up her secrets easily. One of those secrets is how heart valves and other biological valves work. They keep fluids moving in one direction while preventing backflow, all without needing any active motors or powered controls to drive them.
To find out how, Mengfei He of Harvard University and colleagues studied pig mitral valves. They wanted to set up a system to see how the valve leaflets, the thin flaps of tissue that act as doors, react when fluid pushes back against them. They used high-speed cameras, turbine flow meters and pressure sensors to compare the mitral valve of an extracted pig heart with a simplified physical model made of a thin elastic cone inside a rigid tube.
In particular, they tracked how both the natural leaflets and the synthetic equivalent deformed and closed. The researchers also wanted to see how fluctuations in the flow affected the synthetic valve. So they used a syringe to inject deliberate flow spikes into the water stream.
Finally, they developed a mathematical equation that predicts the valve's transition toward closure and how long it can take based on the flow around it. Their findings, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, provide a fascinating insight into how valves work. Both the biological pig valve and the synthetic cone responded to the fluid in similar ways.
When fluid pushed back against either structure, both eventually closed to prevent backflow. In the synthetic cone, random fluctuations in the flow, known as fluid noise, helped trigger this closure. Far from having a negative effect, this noise acts like a switch.
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