The problem Mechanical Ventilator solves

Using the current mechanical ventilators there is a chance of having barotrauma to the patients while they use mechanical ventilators. Barotrauma is due to the high pressure differences between lungs and external environment. It leads to higher surface tension on diseased alveoli. This leads to rupture in alveoli which is fatal.

In current ventilators, only 1 endotracheal tube is provided. This is common for both the lungs (it is placed in the trachea). However, there are certain cases where the endotracheal tube should be placed in each lung. There are also cases where the endotracheal tube is accidentally pushed too far ahead that it enters only one lung which leads to barotrauma. Hence the design has been improved by including 2 endotracheal tubes instead of 1. This ensures that in any case, air is always distributed to both the lungs.

There are also situations where each lung of a patient has different compliances meaning, each lung requires a certain amount of air. For e.g: the right lung might need 60% of the air delivered and the left lung might need the remaining 40%. This could occur because of an infection that attacks a particular lung. With our design, the amount of air to each lung can be controlled as well. This is brought about by a connector component that has a slider that opens and closes the openings of the endotracheal tubes. If right lung needs 60% air and left needs 40%, then the endotracheal tube hole for left lung is closed partially thus allowing only a small portion of air to enter. Hence we are able to achieve variable control of air entering the lungs. The slider is moved by means of a slider crank mechanism powered by a motor.

Thus barotrauma is resolved with our new design of mechanical ventilator.

Challenges we ran into

1. Mating components was quite hard as this was our first time working with Fusion 360. More practice and trials allowed us to overcome this.
2. Creating molds were difficult. We learnt the combine body feature to overcome it.