A Novel Artificial Pancreas: Energy Efficient Valveless Piezoelectric Actuated Closed-Loop Insulin Pump for T1DM

Abstract

The objective of this work is to develop a closed-loop controlled insulin pump to keep the blood glucose level of Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients in the desired range. In contrast to the existing artificial pancreas systems with syringe pumps, an energy-efficient, valveless piezoelectric pump is designed and simulated with different types of controllers and glucose-insulin models. COMSOL Multiphysics is used for piezoelectric-fluid-structural coupled 3D finite element simulations of the pump. Then, a reduced-order model (ROM) is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink together with optimal and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers and glucose–insulin models of Ackerman, Bergman, and Sorensen. Divergence angle, nozzle/diffuser diameters, lengths, chamber height, excitation voltage, and frequency are optimized with dimensional constraints to achieve a high net flow rate and low power consumption. A prototype is manufactured and experimented with different excitation frequencies. It is shown that the proposed system successfully controls the delivered insulin for all three glucose–insulin models.

Recent trends in structures and applications of valveless piezoelectric pump—a review

“…In this year, Chen et al [69] improved the structure of Ma et al [100] in 2016 by transmitting the vibration through a hydraulic actuator, which reduces the rigidity and energy consumption, and simplifies the assembly process. In 2020, Kaçar et al [102] advanced a pump for insulin delivery and simulated with different types of controllers and glucose-insulin models. The pump can reach a flow rate of 220 µl min −1 .…”

“…Due to the precise control and the small size, and the structure of no valve to block the macromolecules and biologically active cells, the valveless piezoelectric pump is widely studied and applied in drug delivery and biomedical applications [84,101,102,106,107,112,120,121,132,152,[167][168][169] as the schematic in figure 14(a). Most of the application scenarios are related to the human body, and a demand for low voltage drive is essential for safety reasons [86].…”

Special Issue on “Human Health Engineering Volume II”

“…The 12 presented papers in this second volume are grouped according to their contributions to the main parts of the monitoring and control engineering scheme applied to human health applications, namely papers focusing on measuring/sensing of physiological variables [5][6][7][8], papers describing health monitoring applications [9][10][11][12], and finally, examples of control applications for human health [13][14][15][16]. As indicated by Aerts [1], it is envisioned that the field of human health engineering is complementary to the field of biomedical engineering as it not only contributes to developing technology for curing patients or supporting chronically ill people, but also covers applications on healthy humans (e.g., sports, sleep, and stress) and thus also focuses on disease prevention and optimizing human well-being more generally.…”

“…Finally, the third series of articles in this SI discusses examples of control applications for human health management. Kaçar et al [13] developed a prototype of a closed-loop controlled valveless piezoelectric insulin pump for keeping the blood glucose level of Type 1 diabetes mellitus patients within desired ranges. In their paper, Trappey et al [14] developed a system for virtual reality-based exposure therapy for treating people suffering from driving phobia disorder using bioresponse measurements to optimise fear-based driving scenarios.…”

Working Mechanisms and Experimental Research of Piezoelectric Pump with a Cardiac Valve-like Structure

“…Generally, the fluid is driven by the piezoelectric pump through the piezoelectric vibrator and special structures. It has the advantages of a simple structure [ 15 ], easy miniaturization [ 16 ], and no electromagnetic interference [ 17 ], leading to widespread use in microfluidic applications [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], medical equipment [ 18 , 19 , 20 ], fuel cells [ 21 , 22 , 23 ], and other fields. In terms of structure, piezoelectric pumps can be divided into valve-based piezoelectric pumps and valve-less piezoelectric pump [ 13 ].…”