Visualization of main and leakage flow in magnetically suspended centrifugal blood pump

Magnetically suspended centrifugal blood pump is implantable blood pump that can obtain an enough blood pressure and blood flow to assist the adult left ventricle. This blood pump has an impeller without a shaft in order to avoid thrombus formation on the shaft seal. It is important to improve the efficiency of this artificial heart pump and to develop a pump with a low-machine Reynolds number and a low-specific speed. In this study, we carried out a visualization experiment with a rotating Dove prism and concluded with a numerical analysis, focusing on the main flow and leakage flow. It was found that the main flow pattern inside the impeller was different between all vanes, and the leakage flow in the gap was non-uniform.