Abstract
The axial-flow type blood pump(XVAD) which has been developed in our group consists of mechanical parts (an impeller, a diffuser and a flow straightener) and electrical parts (a motor and a magnetic bearing). The magnetic bearing system fully levitates the impeller to remove mechanical coupling with other parts of the pump with constant gap, which needs non-contact type gap sensing. Conventional gap sensors are too large to be adopted to the implantable axial -flow type blood pump. Thus, in this paper, the compact eddy current type gap sensor system proper for the implantable axial-flow type blood pump was developed and its performance was evaluated in vitro. The developed eddy current type gap sensor system is a transformer type and has a differential probe. Sensor coil(probe) has small dimensions(6 mm diameter, 2 mm thickness) and its optimal inductance was determined as 0.068 mH for the measurement range of $0\sim3mm$. It could be manufactured with 130 turns of the 0.04 mm diameter copper coil. The characteristics of the developed eddy current type gap sensor system was evaluated by in vitro experiment. At experiment, it showed satis(actory performance to apply to the magnetic bearing system of the XVAD. It could measure the gap up to 3mm, but the linearity was decreased at the range of $1.8\sim3.0mm$. Moreover, it showed no difference in different media such as the water and the blood at the temperature range of $35\sim40^{\circ}C$.
