Zahra Mollahoseini; Bahman Vahidi
Volume 12, Issue 2 , September 2018, , Pages 125-136
Abstract
For patients with chronic pulmonary disease, artificial lungs to which right ventricular pumps blood flow is considered as a bridge to lung transplantation. The performance of this device is measured by several criteria, including the efficiency of the device in gas exchange, non-damage to blood cells ...
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For patients with chronic pulmonary disease, artificial lungs to which right ventricular pumps blood flow is considered as a bridge to lung transplantation. The performance of this device is measured by several criteria, including the efficiency of the device in gas exchange, non-damage to blood cells and low impedance compared to normal lung. In this study, the non-Newtonian blood flow around arrays of hollow fibers, as a model of fiber bundles in artificial lungs, was numerically investigated by finite volume. Two types of square and diagonal arrangements for fibers were considered to examine the effect of arrangement, besides the inlet velocity effect on the flow distribution, shear stress and the exchanged oxygen concentration between the surface of the fibers and the blood stream. It was observed that the flow velocity and shear stress in the diagonal arrangement were far more than the square arrangement that for the maximum velocity (10/87 cm/s), the shear stress on the fibers in the diagonal arrangement was about 3.5 times that of the square arrangement. Also, there was a significant difference between the results of this analysis and the results of other studies in which oxygen exchange was ignored, which illustrates the importance of gas exchange modeling. As a measure of the efficiency of the device, from the viewpoint of gas exchange, the mass flow rate of oxygen was investigated in the output of the domain. As a result, the diagonal arrangement is much more efficient in oxygen exchange. However, there was a higher pressure drop across the fibers, for a diagonal arrangement, in comparison with the square arrangement. The results of this simulation can be a good starting point for optimal artificial lung design and can be effective in optimizing the design of clinical trials.
