The current left-ventricle assist
device (LVAD) system is centered around a
custom, levitating impeller blood
pump for use in human patients with
cardiac disease to boost blood flow. The main
unique feature of the blood pump is its ability to
magnetically levitate the impeller within the
pump's housing, drastically reducing friction
losses and increasing pump lifetime.
The purpose of the project is to
miniaturize the system such that
it can be scaled to more portable configurations,
eventually for use in human patients. As a
life-critical system, it must be highly reliable
and safe. Since this system is still in
development, our end-user is both the human
patients as well as the physicians and engineers
involved in its further development. To this end,
our system will provide low-level access to the
control system including the ability to re-program
and re-configure.
The current pump consists of the magnetic
levitation coils, a three phase motor to spin the
impeller, and several hall-effect sensors to sense
the position of the front and back of the impeller.
To keep the pump levitating, the force applied by
the magnetic coils are constantly readjusted to
compensate for positional error.
The control system is consists of a microcontroller
connected to analog-to-digital converters for the
hall effect sensors and motor control circuitry for
the coils and the 3-phase motor. This
microcontroller must be powerful enough to handle
the control algorithm which keeps the pump
levitating and rotating. Power is provided from a
battery pack on the outside of the body. The entire
external assembly needs to be robust to water
splashes, drops from approximately hip level to
floor, and regular human movement.
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Project Name
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Reducing VAD electronic package size
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Project Number
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P11021
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Project Family
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Biomedical Device Development
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Track
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Assistive Devices and Bioengineering
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Start Term
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2010-1 Fall
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End Term
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2010-2 Winter
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Faculty Guide
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Edward Hanzlik
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Primary Customer
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Dr. Steven Day
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Project Members
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Andrew Hoag (CE)
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Juan Jackson (EE)
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Smiha Sayal (IE)
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Zachery Shivers (EE)
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Nicole Varble (ME)
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Jason Walzer (ME)
P11021 Team Photo
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