Tetralogy of Fallot is a congenital heart disease affecting newborns and involves stenosis of the right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT). Surgical correction often widens the RVOT with a transannular enlargement patch, but this causes issues including pulmonary valve insufficiency and progressive right ventricle failure. A monocusp valve can prevent pulmonary regurgitation; however, valve failure resulting from factors including leaflet design, morphology, and immune response can occur, ultimately resulting in pulmonary insufficiency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoft pneumatic artificial muscles are increasingly popular in the field of soft robotics due to their light-weight, complex motions, and safe interfacing with humans. In this paper, we present a Vacuum-Powered Artificial Muscle (VPAM) with an adjustable operating length that offers adaptability throughout its use, particularly in settings with variable workspaces. To achieve the adjustable operating length, we designed the VPAM with a modular structure consisting of cells that can be clipped in a collapsed state and unclipped as desired.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicromachines (Basel)
August 2021
The majority of soft pneumatic actuators for rehabilitation exercises have been designed for adult users. Specifically, there is a paucity of soft rehabilitative devices designed for infants with upper and lower limb motor disabilities. We present a low-profile vacuum-powered artificial muscle (LP-VPAM) with dimensions suitable for infants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHerein, the computational modeling of a fluidic oscillator for use in an educational respiratory simulator apparatus is presented. The design provides realistic visualization and tuning of respiratory biomechanics using a part that is (i) inexpensive, (ii) easily manufactured without the need for specialized equipment, (iii) simple to assemble and maintain, (iv) does not require any electronics, and (v) has no moving components that could be prone to failure. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is used to assess flow characteristics of the system, and a prototype is developed and tested with a commercial benchtop respiratory simulator.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, we present a generalized modeling tool for predicting the output force profile of vacuum-powered soft actuators using a simplified geometrical approach and the principle of virtual work. Previous work has derived analytical formulas to model the force-contraction profile of specific actuators. To enhance the versatility and the efficiency of the modelling process we propose a generalized numerical algorithm based purely on geometrical inputs, which can be tailored to the desired actuator, to estimate its force-contraction profile quickly and for any combination of varying geometrical parameters.
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