Flowmeter based on capillary tubes trough 3D stereolithography fabrication for test mechanical ventilation equipment

ABSTRACT

Mechanical ventilators and high-flow machines are medical devices with important measuring instruments for monitoring patients with respiratory failure. The most common monitoring parameters are lung proximal pressure, inspiratory flow, expiratory flow, inspiratory oxygen fraction, etc. The present work delves into the design, fabrication, and experimental measurement of a proximal flow sensor based on the theory of capillary tubes and stereolithography. The design was carried out in Inventor Professional 2020 software and then the computational study by CFD ANSYS to compare the dynamic pressure states of the geometric measurement points. The manufacturing was carried out using SLA 3D printing technology on an ANYCUBIC FHOTON MONO X.The fabricated FM SLA prototype has radially positioned latex tubing lines to achieve differential pressure measurement at two points separated by capillary tubes. These hoses are connected to a developmental embedded system based on a HONEYWELL 001PG7A5 differential pressure sensor and Arduino Uno Microcontroller. Finally, experimental tests of the Flow Meter Stereolithography (FM SLA) protype measurements were performed with flow rates from 0 to 44.5 lpm in 1 lpm increments. From the collected data we have an R2 0.9983 in quadratic polynomial approximation with the actual measurement data. © 2022 IEEE.