• FEM
• Artificial Ventricle
• Soft Robotics
• Buckling

Cardiovascular diseases, which could often be the determining factor of heart failure, are the first cause of death worldwide. The gold standard in such cases is the transplant, but45%of the patients die while waiting. For this reason, the development of a Total Artificial Heart (TAH) is of extreme medical importance. At present, there is only one clinically adopted TAH: the CardioWest. Many TAHs are under research, but they all suffer from device-related complications, such as thrombosis and hemolysis, mainly addressed to the compliance mismatch between the natural tissues and the device. In the last decades, soft robotic technologies have been pinpointed as possible approaches to solve the aforementioned problems, but soft TAHs cannot yet reach physiological requirements.
This master thesis proposes a soft robotic artificial ventricle, composed by a ventricular chamber and an actuation layer of artificial muscles that is able to reach physiological values of pumped blood volume and generated blood pressure. The aim of this work is to study the deformation of the ventricular chamber, relative to different geometries and contractile capabilities of the actuation layer. Firstly, a geometrical model of the system was developed. A FEM study was then used to study the ventricle contraction, also simulating physiological blood pressure conditions. Finally, the FEM model was experimentally validated. The described models allowed the design of the device, for what concerns its dimensions, constitutive materials, and requirements for the artificial muscles, both in terms of stroke and force generation capabilities.