Design and development of a mock circulation loop for blood pumps

Abstract

Congestive heart failure is a condition where insufficient blood is circulated around the body resulting in poor perfusion and multiple organ failure. Just in America alone, heart failure accounts for approximately 250,000 deaths yearly. With the limited number of hearts available for transplant, patients must seek other alternative. However with the use of left ventricular assist device (LVAD), the patients’ life quality will improve. However before a LVAD can be implanted, they must first be tested in an experimental flow loop. These mock circulatory loop are use to set the standard for testing pump while varying the different hemodynamic parameters.

The main objective is to design and make alteration to the mock circulatory loop to further improve it. Further modification has been done to the set up; a pulsating pump has been fabricated and added to the loop to replicate the function of a heart. The aim of the piston pump is to supply the mock circulatory loop a constant flow rate of 5 liters per minute and a differential pressure of 100mmHg to simulate as closely as possible the actual human physiologic system condition. In addition to that, a mock circulation loop was set up to test run the piston pump. The result showed that the current setting of the pump is powerful enough to meet the required flow and pressure.

In further works, addition of materials and items to increase the complexity of the loop, usage of other fluid mediums to conduct the experiment and modification to certain parts can be carried out.