Performance analysis of ventricular assist devices using finite element flow simulation

Numerical simulation plays an increasingly important role in the design of medical devices in general, and ventricular assist devices in particular. Modeling of flow in blood pumps has the potential to shorten the design cycle and give the designers important insights into causes of blood damage and suboptimal performance. We present a set of flow simulations designed to reproduce previously obtained experimental data relating flow volume generated by the pump to the pressure head imposed between the outflow and inflow cannulas. These performance curves are obtained using a stabilized space-time finite element formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations, with a shear-slip mesh update used to accommodate the movement of the impeller with respect to non-axisymmetric housing.

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