Increased Longevity and Pumping Performance of an Injection Molded Soft Total Artificial Heart

Abstract

In this work, we present an injection molded soft total artificial heart (sTAH) produced from high-temperature vulcanizing silicone using an industrial metal injection mold. At 60 beats per minute, the sTAH exhibited a total cardiac output of over 16 L/min against physiological pressures on a mock circulation and was pumped continuously for 110,000 actuation cycles. Finite element analysis was used to identify stress concentrations within the sTAH, allowing an optimized design to be proposed.