Emulation of ventricular suction in a hybrid mock circulation

Ventricular suction occurs when a turbodynamic ventricular assist device (VAD) tries to pump more blood from the ventricle than is available. Suction causes a stagnation of the blood flow and can damage the heart muscle and must therefore be avoided in clinical practice. A hybrid mock circulation is a test bench for VADs, which is based on a hardware-in-the-loop concept. It consists of a numerical model of the human blood circulation and a numerical-hydraulic interface, which allows interaction between the numerical model and a VAD to be tested. This paper shows how ventricular suction is implemented in the hybrid mock circulation to allow testing of suction detection algorithms and physiological VAD controllers. Experimental results show that suction can be emulated as desired.