A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE CARDIANOVE BLOOD PUMP USING TWO LEADING CFD SOFTWARE PACKAGES

The Cardianove Inc. (Montreal, Canada) blood pump is a left ventricular assist device with a novel dual-inlet, mixed-flow design. The pump features blood-lubricated hydrodynamic bearings, a motor integrated into the blood flow path to facilitate its cooling, and overhung outflow stator blading. This particular pump configuration generates many challenges to commercial CFD software packages including complex mesh generation for multiple flow passages and small gaps; and multiple rotor-stator interactions. Two leading commercial CFD software packages, namely, ANSYS CFX-TASCflow (ANSYS, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA) and FLUENT (Fluent, Inc., Lebanon, NH), were employed to simulate blood flow in the pump. The ANSYS package uses a structured mesh technology, and FLUENT uses an unstructured CFD methodology. Identical flow conditions were imposed on the two analyses. This work makes an objective critical comparison between the CFD results obtained from each package. The findings indicate very good agreement between pressure head prediction and lesser agreements of integrated surface flow quantities. Velocity flow fields have varying degrees of agreement depending on pump location. Both graphical and quantitative CFD results are compared head-to-head and discussed in detail.