Hearts are at the center of our cardiovascular system, and are one of the main reasons why we are alive. In the medical field, people are always looking for new ways to create artificial organs, and design them in the most simple ways possible, in order to prolong people's lifespans. This is a process known as "Biomedical Engineering." Biomedical engineering is a discipline that advances knowledge in engineering, biology and medicine, and improves human health through cross-disciplinary activities that integrate the engineering sciences with the biomedical sciences and clinical practice. The main organ of focus for this project was the heart. The heart is essentially a pump, and its valves act as controls to help ensure the correct direction and pacing of blood flow. If they do not work as intended, then blood flow through the heart is impeded. Thus, biomedical engineers need to understand how the heart and its valves work, including the physical properties of the valves.
We were given the task of: "You are a team of engineers for a bio-materials company that has a cardiovascular systems client who wants you to develop a model that can be used to test the properties of heart valves without using real specimens."
This assignment was split into 3 different parts, each with their own learning objectives.
Part I Learning Objectives:
Part II Learning Objectives:
Part III Learning Objectives:
Through these three parts, our goal was to finalize a design and generate a model for our heart valve. Here is what we came up with:
This assignment was split into 3 different parts, each with their own learning objectives.
Part I Learning Objectives:
- Identify major structures of the human heart on diagrams and virtual specimens.
- Describe the flow of blood through the human heart.
- Describe the structure and function of heart valves.
Part II Learning Objectives:
- Describe the forces encountered in the human body to open and close aortic valves.
- Define Young's modulus and how it relates to the properties of valve tissues.
- Determine the Young's modulus for a material by calculating the materials' stress and strain and creating a stress vs. strain graph.
- Calculate Young's modulus for various materials and use the Young's modulus, stress and strain equations to calculate unknown values, such as force.
Part III Learning Objectives:
- Work through the steps of the engineering design process to examine a problem, research it and decide the best way to tackle it, design and create a solution, test the prototype solution and redesign as needed, and then report their findings.
- Research the materials that have been used in artificial heart valves in the past; identify possible materials for their prototype valve model designs.
- Test materials to determine their elasticity; compare those values to the elasticity of real heart valves.
- Construct prototype model heart valves, collect data from testing the model for its functionality compared to a real structure, and use the data to analyze success of the model.
- Compile, summarize and present their research and designs to the class in verbal and written formats.
Through these three parts, our goal was to finalize a design and generate a model for our heart valve. Here is what we came up with:
Our assignment was to calculate the Young's Modulus. The equation goes as follows: