Physiological hardware-in-the-loop test bench for mechanical ventilation

Abstract

This article presents a hardware-in-the-loop system that can simulate a patient’s physiological responses to mechanical ventilation. The system includes a hardware platform with a mechatronic lung that can physically simulate the respiratory mechanics. A computational patient model replicates the pressure/volume behaviour of the lungs and the impaired gas exchange. Based on current ventilator settings, the model calculates signal curves, which are then transmitted to the physically existing sensors. This enables the test bench to reproduce the pressure/volume behaviour of the lungs and the gas exchange of a simulated patient on mechanical ventilation. In the future, the hardware-in-the-loop system could play an important role in testing and validating highly automated functions in mechanical ventilation and represent an alternative to animal testing.