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PubMed · 16111401

Prioritizing verification checks and preventive maintenance.

Abstract

The role of the equipment technician has not changed in 30 years, but the equipment and the staff using it has. It is clearly time to update our procedures and methodology. Some of these time-consuming PM tasks yield no measurable benefit to neither our industry nor to our customers. All of the additional requirements placed onto us recently indicate that our customers' needs have changed and negates our obsession to place inspection stickers all over the place. We need to adapt to the changing environment and become the technicians of the 21st century by abandoning long, outdated practices such as mindless monthly inspections. We are valuable to our customers and our employers for what we know--not what we do. Not just anyone can walk into anactive operating room theater and find a bad patient cableon the spot. We alone can control the work that we do. We are the pinnacle of all electronics repair with the duties and responsibilities that go along with it. Isn't it abouttime we acted like it?

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BibTeXRIS

Jeff Maxwell. Prioritizing verification checks and preventive maintenance.. https://doi.org/10.2345/0899-8205(2005)39%5B275%3Apvcapm%5D2.0.co%3B2

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Optimal design of non-Newtonian, micro-scale viscous pumps for biomedical devices.

The present paper addresses the numerical optimization of geometrical parameters of non-Newtonian micro-scale viscous pumps for biomedical devices. The objective is to maximize the mass flow rate per unit of shaft power consumed by the rotor when an external pressure load is applied along the channel that houses the rotor. Two geometric parameters are considered in the optimization process: (i) the height of the channel that houses the rotor (H) and (ii), the eccentricity (epsilon) of the rotor. Three different micro-scale viscous pump configurations were tested: a straight-housed pump (I-shaped housing) and two curved housed pumps (L- and U-shaped housings). The stress-strain constitutive law is modeled by a power-law relation. The results show that the geometric optimization of micro-scale viscous pumps is critical since the mass flow rate propelled by the rotor is highly dependent on epsilon and H. Numerical simulations indicate that mass flow rate is maximized when epsilon approximately 0, namely when the rotor is placed at a distance of 0.05 radii from the lower wall. The results also show that micro-scale viscous pumps with curved housing provide higher mass flow rate per unit of shaft power consumed when compared with straight-housed pumps. The results are presented in terms optimized dimensions of all three configurations (i.e., H(opt) and epsilon(opt)) and for values of the power-law index varying between 0.5 (shear thinning fluids) and 1.5 (shear-thickening fluids).

Biomedical Engineering↗