Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Science

TU Delft TV: Versatile Ventilator

TU-employees led by Professor Amir Zadpoor (3mE) have designed and built a ventilator made from standard industrial parts: reliable and widely obtainable.

Teunis van Manen explains the ventilator. (Still from TU Delft TV)

In the workshop, there is a sound of fast breathing. Pff, pff, pff. The sound comes from a bellow that is being tested for durability. A counter shows over a half million compressions. Other parts, like valves and sensors, have a specified reliability. “These are components that are used all over the world in process automation”, says Professor Amir Zadpoor. “They come with guaranteed reliability, and they can be bought all over the industrialised world.”

The article continues below the video.

Besides reliable parts, Zadpoor also chose for redundancy in the design. “Redundancy means that you can perform the same task in different ways”, he explains. So if you can’t get oxygen sensors, because they are suddenly sold out, you first fill the bellows for the required part with pure oxygen, and subsequently replenish the volume with air. A linear sensor on the bellows allows you to do so. “As soon as oxygen sensors, or mass flow sensors, become available again you can just build them in to make the machine more accurate.”

The valves for letting gasses in and out are controlled by an industrial process computer. The software, including the touch-screen interface, was made from home by PhD student Mauricio Cruz Saldivar.

Zadpoor estimates the material costs of the ventilator on about 3,000 Euros. As soon as the documentation is finished, the design will be published open-access through the TU Delft repository.

Science editor Jos Wassink

Do you have a question or comment about this article?

j.w.wassink@tudelft.nl

Comments are closed.