Mimicking the Complex Human Circulatory System via a Custom Hydro-mechanical Pulse Duplicator

Abstract

The complex human systemic circulation can be mimicked by exploiting in vitro simulators, giving the chance to replicate both physiological and pathological conditions. Specifically, in this work, it is considered the Pulse Duplicator (PD) in use at the Healing Research Laboratory, at the University of Padova, Italy, aimed at testing medical devices, accelerating innovation cycles, and rapidly exploring new effective practical solutions. Besides the opportunities of such a workbench, there are also some challenges, especially for issues that are related to the set-up of experiments, in order to guarantee their quality and repeatability. It goes without saying that the proper tuning of certain PD parameters is crucial. This paper shows how one can assist the system tuning procedure by leveraging some tools of dynamical systems.