Robust shape optimization of the FDA blood pump

In recent decades, significant effort has been put into designing ventricular assist devices to treat heart conditions, as heart transplantation can benefit only a small number of patients. These pumps are usually employed to assist the heart ventricle in pumping blood to the patient’s body. However, the device reliability, as well as the mechanical blood damage, still represent a serious challenge in clinical applications, limiting their potential benefits.

In this study we developed and validated a numerical setup for the high-fidelity simulation of a centrifugal blood pump and then we employed it in a multi-objective robust shape optimization framework. The effects of operating uncertainties on the hydrodynamic and hemocompatibility performance of the device are taken into account to obtain an optimal configuration whose characteristics are minimally affected by these small variations. Although the approach is demonstrated on a benchmark case, i.e. the blood pump designed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it can easily translate to more complex VAD geometries, permitting to design more biocompatible and robust blood pumps and thereby minimizing the risk of postoperative complications for patients.