Marcus H. Heitger, Richard D. Jones, Tim J. Anderson

A deadbeat controller has been proposed for the control of pulsatile pump flow in an implantable rotary blood pump (IRBP). A lumped parameter model of the cardiovascular system, in combination with the stable dynamical models of pulsatile flow and differential pressure (head) estimation for the IRBP was used to evaluate the controller. Pump speed and current were used as the only measured variables of the control system. The control algorithm was tested using both constant and sinusoidal reference pump flow input, under healthy and heart failure conditions. Results showed that the controller is able to track the reference input with minimal error in the presence of model uncertainty.