Case Study: St. Jude Medical achieves safer, more efficient LVAD designs with COMSOL Multiphysics

Enhancing Performance and Safety of Medical Implantable Devices with Multiphysics Simulation

St. Jude Medical faced the complex challenge of designing left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) that must safely circulate blood, avoid clotting, be biocompatible, thermally safe, robust in everyday use, and eventually eliminate transcutaneous power cables. To tackle these coupled mechanical, fluid, thermal, magnetic, and electrical problems, St. Jude’s R&D team used Comsol’s COMSOL Multiphysics software throughout the design process.

Using Comsol, engineers built more than 230 multiphysics models—CFD and rotating‑machinery simulations for a magnetically levitated rotor, coupled 3D magnetic-field and circuit models to evaluate wireless power transfer (efficiency, misalignment, and tissue heating), thermal models of implant heating, and impact analyses of external controllers. Comsol-enabled simulations led to a magnetically levitated, pulsatile pump design that reduces clotting risk, validated feasibility of wireless power transfer (reducing infection and improving patient quality of life), and demonstrated controller resiliency after impact, materially improving device safety and performance.

St. Jude Medical

Freddy Hansen

Senior R&D Engineer