Heart Valve

Project Overview:

In this project, Our goal was to answer the question, Can you model a functional heart valve model without using organic materials? In this project, we made a model of a heart valve that mimics the function of the Aortic valve. It stays passively sealed while water (blood) is inside, and when pumped, or when blood is pumped into it, the seal releases and lets blood out.

Research:

To begin this project we started by researching the inner workings of the Heart and mainly the Aortic Valve. This allowed us to get a better understanding of how this valve worked inside of the heart so that we could try and replicate the workings in our own models.

Research on how heart tissues work -- their structure and composition

First Prototype:

This was our original prototype. it consisted of a rubber tool with a metal cylinder attached to the end of it. Inside of this cylinder is a glass ball. This glass ball moves backwards when the liquid is pumped into the inside to allow the water to flow into the tube. Then when the water is stopped being pumped it moves back to the front of the tube to make sure to not allow the water back through.

Final Product:

For our final product we have a large cylindrical plastic tube with an opening in one end that is placed into a bucket of water. Connected to that tube is a bendable rubber tube with a pump connecting it to another tube and back into the bucket. This pump has a flap on the inside that when pumped it allows the water to flow into the pump and a flap on the other side that lets it get pushed into the other tube. After this the flaps closes so that the water is not allowed to enter back into the pump. The water then cycles back into the bucket to allow the cycle to continue.

Final Document:

This is our final document that displays all of our pictures, videos, and brainstorming ideas. It also has all of our tests we ran while testing materials.

Copy of Design a heart valve (Part 3) Steps 3, 4, and 5 - Design and Build your Prototype, Test the Prototypes, rebuild re-test as necessary

Reflection:

Throughout this project I learned a lot about what I know how to do well and what I can improve on. Firstly one thing I did well was my collaborating with my group. This allowed me and my group mates to understand what each person was doing and also what was going on. This project can be confusing with so many different parts so collaborating with each other is vital and it greatly helped us with our success. The second thing that went well was our problem solving. After making our first prototype we discovered that it didn´t work quite as well as we wanted. With this we created a new model that worked in the way we wanted it to.

Now even though this project went overall well there are still some areas for improvement. The first thing that I could improve on would be my time management skills. Although we were working hard during the duration of this project I definitely could have put in some more urgency to get things done. I felt like the deadline was so far away at the beginning and only started working harder as the deadline crept forward. The second thing that could use improvement is organization. A lot of the time most of things I was doing was all over the place. I think to improve on this I could attempt to try and tackle one thing at a time rather than a bunch of different tasks. In conclusion There is always room for improvement but I think that this project went really well and I am proud of the outcome.

Page updated

Report abuse