Design and simulation of the right ventricular mini assist centrifugal pump

Nowadays, patients crowd suffering from heart disease is increasing along with the development of technology and mechanized life. On the other hand, donor hearts ready for transplantation is limited in the world. Therefore, exploiting blood pumps is a suitable alternative for helping the patient during the waiting time and even until the end of life. The blood pumps should be able to satisfy the biological needs, including proper output pressure and flow rate, in an acceptable margin of safety in terms of blood injuries. Reduction of pump size, blood exposure time and blood damages such as hemolysis are mentioned as the important challenges in the design of blood pumps. 30% of the patients who are using a left ventricle blood pump, required right ventricle blood pump due to right ventricle failure. Fulfilling the physiological requirement of right ventricle a Rvad must generate pressure in the range of 15-25 mm Hg and flow rate equal to 5 L/min. generation of pressure over 25 mmHg will lead to pulmonary hypertension and its consequent problems. In this research, a centrifugal blood pump was designed for the right ventricle with an emphasis on impeller geometry. This pump was simulated for rotational speeds of 1500 , 2000 rpm and flow rates of 4 - 6 L/min by using the computational fluid dynamics. The designed pump produces a flow rate of 5 L/min at 1500 rpm and a pressure of 23 mmHg. The amount of the hemolysis index calculated by the Lagrangian method is 0.00413.