title: Effects of tongue position and base circle diameter on the performance of a centrifugal blood pump.
abstract: This article presents numerical investigations of the effect of radial gap and volute tongue position on the circumferential pressure distribution and the magnitude of resulting imbalanced radial force. A series of volute models was designed using the constant mean velocity method. The results indicate that a radial clearance of 10% is a good practical value that gives a relatively high head across the pump for a small radial force. The results show that the tongue position at 30 degrees gives the lowest radial force and pressure head. The tongue position at 15 degrees appears to give the best compromise results producing a generated head only 5% less than the maximum value while the radial force is about 22% less than the maximum force.
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Republic of Singapore.
authors.forename: Yew-Wah
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Weng-Kong
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D002498:Centrifugation; D004867:Equipment Design; D006353:Heart-Assist Devices; D018056:Hemorheology / Q000295:instrumentation; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D013314:Stress, Mechanical