Abstract
Gas transfer performance of a membrane oxygenator is under the influence of the behavior of the blood flow patterns. Thus, to optimize design of a membrane oxygenator, it is very important to examine the flow patterns in detail. In an effort to improve the design of membrane oxygenators, a flow measurement system and visualization system have been developed and implemented. The flow measurement was conducted on in-vitro experiments using two types of fluids which have different conductions. In the experiments, four types of membrane oxygenators with different design were evaluated with flow measurement. The membrane oxygenators have 48 electrodes among hollow fibers inside of the housing to measure the change of the electric resistance between each electrodes.The flow visualization utilizing a computer was applied to visualize flow patterns in the membrane oxygenators. We could see the flow patterns, for example, channelling and stagnation, in 3D animation with this system. The findings from the flow visualization were that the fluids flowing depend heavily on the housing shape and winding patterns of the hollow fibers. In conclusion, the proposed flow visualization method was very effective in evaluating the flow patterns to examine of the housing design and winding pattern of hollow fibers.
