Prediction of shear stress-related hemolysis in centrifugal blood pumps by computational fluid dynamics

A quantitative evaluation of shear stress-related hemolysis in centrifugal blood pumps with different impeller designs has been investigated. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is applied to track the shear stress history of the streamlines of red cells. The power law model of the relations among the hemolysis, shear stress and exposure time is used to evaluate the hemolysis in the pumps. Hemolysis tests are also conducted to verify the estimations. Both the estimations and experimentally measured hemolysis levels show that the hemolysis in the streamlined impeller pump developed by the authors is lower than the pump with straight-vane under the same boundary conditions. The approach is proved to be acceptable and practical to predict hemolysis levels of blood pumps.