Heart Valve
Introduction
For this STEM engineering project we were tasked with designing, building, and testing our own synthetic heart valve. Considering we had little knowledge of how these complicated biological machines operated we took roughly a week of class time to fully research both old and new heart valve concepts. Following this my group assembled what we thought would be the best working valve and subsequently tested it.
Our design
My group chose to think up an entirely new idea for our heart valve. The design consisted of a small tube, open at both ends, and a cap that fit the tube on top. On the sides of each of these items there were little extensions that we added so we could wrap our rubber bands around them to create an elastic force to keep our heart valve water proof until force is added.
our design (images)
This mini project was an interesting thing to do. I realized that this project was a combination of the engineering we were focusing on this year and the biotech we took part in as sophomores. I also learned that not all things can be improved upon. The design of a heart valve is actually quite simple, so it was hard to create something as simple and efficient that would still do the job well. While my groups final product looks nothing like an actual heart valve, the basic concepts still apply and the valve actually functioned to a certain degree.