Research of flow dynamics and occlusion condition in roller pump systems used for ventricular assist

Roller pumps have been widely used in the ventricular assist field for many years, while the significant hemolysis caused by its mechanical stress is still a fundamental problem. Although the usual under-occlusion setting was considered as an effective method to reduce the hemolysis rate, its nonocclusive condition of the whole process may cause serious backflow results, which exactly places many restrictions on this method. In this study, the simulation experiments based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is conducted, and the occlusion angle is proposed and used to explore a more reliable adjustment form of the occlusion condition. The parameterized geometry of a roller pump is established based on the occlusion angle and other parameters. In order to simulate the motion of the roller, the dynamic mesh mode is introduced to the CFD model, and the analytic formulations used to determine the boundary position are derived. In the whole operation process of the roller pump, four feature positions of the rollers were focused and extracted, and the flow characteristics and the shear stress distribution at these positions were demonstrated. It was found that the entry and exit of the rollers could cause clear shear stress peak, especially when one roller entered, the peak got extremely high. Furthermore, the roller pumps with different occlusion angles were compared, and the results showed that decreasing the occlusion angle could lead to a notable decrease in the amplitude and range of high shear stress and the hemolysis index with a small loss of the occlusion duration. It can be concluded that appropriately decreasing the occlusion angle may be an effective method to alleviate the hemolysis which should be given more attention.