Abstract
The turbo-type blood pump studied in this paper has an impeller that is magnetically suspended in a double volute casing. The impeller rotates with minimal fluctuations caused by fluid and magnetic forces. In order to improve stability of the rotating impeller and to facilitate long-term use, a careful investigation of the pressure fluctuations and of the fluid force acting on the impeller is necessary. For this purpose, two models of the pump with different volute cross-sectional area are designed and studied with computational fluid dynamics software. The results show that the fluid force varies with the flow rate and shape of the volute, that the fluctuations of fluid force decrease with increasing flow rate and that the vibratory movement of the impeller is more efficiently suppressed in a narrow volute.