Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics Techniques to Blood Pumps

Present-day computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques can be used to analyze the behavior of fluid flow in a variety of pumps. CFD can be a powerful tool during the design stage for rapid virtual prototyping of different designs, analyzing performance parameters, and making design improvements. Computational flow solutions provide information such as the location and size of stagnation zones and the local shear rate. These parameters can be correlated to the extent of hemolysis and thrombus formation and are critical to the success of a blood pump. CFD-ACE, an advanced commercial CFD code developed by CFD Research Corporation, has been applied to fluid flows in rotary machines, such as axial flow pumps and inducers. Preprocessing and postprocessing tools for efficient grid generation and advanced graphical flow visualization are integrated seamlessly with CFD-ACE. The code has structured multiblock grid capability, non-Newtonian fluid treatment, a variety of turbulence models, and an Eulerian-Lagrangian particle tracking model. CFD-ACE has been used successfully to study the flow characteristics in an axial flow blood pump. An unstructured flow solver that greatly automates the process of grid generation and speeds up the flow simulation is under development.