[Determining wall shear stress in artificial blood pumps of heart assist devices]

The walls in blood pumps are made of artificial material and thus are thrombogenic to a lesser or larger degree. Also the flow plays a role: a blood flow with no flow separations and stagnation zones is required to avoid the generation of thrombi. A precondition for solving this problem is the assessment of the wall shear rate. However this parameter is difficult to assess because of the deformability of the walls and the pulsation of the flow. Two methods are proposed to estimate the wall shear stress in bloodpumps. The paint erosion method allows a characterisation of the flow near the wall. The second method is a special development of standard Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). A vector field of the flow close to the wall results. Both methods should permit the assessment of the wall shear stress in bloodpumps.