Numerical simulations and measurements of a heart pump

• Main Author: Song, Guo Liang
• Other Authors: Chua Leok Poh
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Bio-mechatronics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/41533
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Artificial heart pumps have been developed and advanced swiftly in recent years for their successful clinical application as heart assissting devices or replacement of the malfunctioning hearts. There are many design criterions that have to be satisfied in order to develop a clinically effective and safe cardiac prosthesis, of which antitraumatic and antitrombogenicity are the two most important criterions which are closely related to the flow characteristics within the pump. Therefore, hemodynamics of the Kyoto-NTN magnetically suspended centrifugal blood pump is investigated in this study. The present investigation aims to understand the flow field in the pump with three different impeller blade design, namely, 16 forward-blending blades (16FB), 16 straight blades (16SB), and 8 backward-bending blades (8BB). Numerical simulations and flow measurements were performed using the commercial software package, FLUENT, and laser Doppler anemometer (LDA) respectively under the operating condition of a 1:1 pump model. This is the first time that the LDA is applied to measure the flow of a pump model with the same size of prototype. The close agreement between the measured and numerical results shows that the measurements have validated the numerical simulation model which has revealed faithfully the inner flow pattern of the blood pump.