Numerical Solution for Blood Flow in a Centrifugal Ventricular Assist Device

A very small centrifugal pump, fully supported by magnetic bearings, is being developed for use as a ventricular assist device to be implanted in humans. In this paper, we apply computational fluid dynamics to model the blood flow to aid in the design of the ventricular assist device. The flow of blood through the pump has been modeled using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software that is commercially available from AEA Technology, UK. The flow regions modeled in version 3 of the Continuous Flow Ventricular Assist Device (CF3) are the fully shrouded four bladed impeller and the two clearance regions around the impeller that are bounded by the pump hub and shroud. This paper describes the geometry and computational grids developed for the flow regions, and the equations of motion for the blood flow are developed. The overall numerically-evaluated flow rates and head rise have similar trends to the flow parameters experimentally measured, indicating that future pump designs can be effectively modeled numerically before being constructed and tested. Numerical solutions are presented and compared with experimentally-obtained overall pump performance results. These solutions are used to predict shear stress levels to be experienced by the blood flowing through the pump, and it is predicted that hemolysis will be insignificant. The solutions also indicate no regions of flow stagnation that can be a source of thrombosis in pumps. The calculations provide a viable design method to achieve improved efficiency in future versions of this pump.