An investigation of blood flow behavior and hemolysis in artificial organs

In our previous study, in vitro hemolysis tests showed that collision flow against wall roughness had an effect on hemolysis when the flow velocity wa s more than 3 m/s and surface roughness was more than Ra = 1.54 mu m. Howev er, the specific portion of the flow on the wall that induced hemolysis was not clarified. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to present the relationship betwee n flow behavior and hemolysis by means of in vitro tests and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. We investigated the relationship between the location of surface roughness and hemolysis. In CFD, we investigated the f low behavior on the wall. The highest rate of hemolysis was observed in a r egion around the center of the surface roughness on the bottom plate. On CF D analyses, the flow behavior included the highest wall shear stress (304 P a) and the highest flow acceleration (2.8 m/s(2)) around the center of the bottom plate. Therefore, it is concluded that the causes of hemolysis durin g collision flow depend upon wall shear stress and flow acceleration.