Computational simulation of flows in an entire centrifugal heart pump

A prototype computational code to numerically simulate the blood flows in an entire centrifugal heart pump has been developed. The unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved on a parallel computer, the Cray T3E. By domain decomposition, the whole flow space is decomposed to a number of subdomains for each of which a structured algebraic grid is assigned. The grids for the inlet eye and blade regions are on the rotating frame while grids for other regions are on the nonrotating frame, and the edge of the rotating grids slides over the edge of the nonrotating frame, and the edge of the rotating grids slides over the edge of the nonrotating grids. The code is able to simulate the flows in the rotor, volute, and diffuser as well as to find pump performance indicators. The present paper presents an overview of the code and describes a study on the effect of volute width.