Flow study on a newly developed impeller for a left ventricular assist device

 Nowadays, left ventricular assist devices are usually designed as high-speed, electric, rotary blood pumps. The pump drains blood from the left ventricular apex via an inlet cannula and ejects into the aortic root via an outlet conduit. To develop a high-performance pump, the present study utilizes partial differential equations to generate a surface representation of the impeller of the blood pump. Flow analysis around the impeller is performed by using the finite volume method to solve the fully incompressible three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations along with the k-ε turbulence model. The numerical results highlight flow features in the end-wall region of the pump, namely the clearance leakage cross-flow, and the vortex associated with this leakage. These secondary flows induce major energy losses in the pumping device. On the test study, a test loop was proposed to measure the performance characteristics. It was shown that the design would provide a flow rate of 4.4 l/min with a pressure head of 122 mmHg. The DC motor power under these conditions was about 6 W and the rotational speed was 4500 rpm. Both the flow rate and head can satisfy the demand for the left artificial heart to work normally. Received: September 25, 2002 / Accepted: January 23, 2003 Acknowledgments National Science Council, R.O.C., grant number NSC 91-2213-E-218-018 supported this work.