IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering

The design of modern bearingless blood pumps requires detailed insights of the occurring shear forces within the pump in order to reduce blood damage. As the optimization by means of experimental shear-force analysis is often impractical, this work presents a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation framework, based on Eulerian hemolysis models, to identify the sources of blood damage in bearingless centrifugal pumps. The outputs obtained with this framework are compared to experimental hemolysis tests conducted with ten different pump prototypes. As a result, this work provides design guidelines for improving the cell compatibility of future centrifugal blood pumps... Read more

Goal: The importance of the main impeller design parameters in bearingless centrifugal pumps with respect to hemolysis for cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) applications are studied in this work. Methods: Impeller prototypes were designed based on theoretical... Read more