Courtesy of Vygon S.A.

Rapid technological developments in health care have been accompanied by the emergence of many new products. Vygon S.A. pioneered the development of sterile, single-use, disposable products, and today is an industry leader pursuing specialized production methods that meet the rigorous quality and cleanliness requirements of medical devices. CFD analysis, using POLYFLOW, has helped Vygon optimize performance and reduce the design time for manufacture of their flexible tubing products.

"Using POLYFLOW's design capability and our design experience, dies can now be designed and tested in two days instead of two weeks, a considerable time-to-market reduction."

Pierre Roy,
Director of Research, Vygon S.A

Design and manufacture of flexible tubing products is made complex by several factors. Often the tubes must transfer multiple fluids, with each fluid flowing in a separate lumen whose cross-sectional area controls the maximum possible flow rate. At the same time, flexibility and small size are typical design goals. Hence the design and manufacture of the tubing must be optimized to yield a very specific cross-sectional shape (see figure). The tubes are manufactured using an extrusion process, requiring a die design that can reliably deliver the desired extrudate shape.8nes via parallel processing for quicker turnaround.

Figure 1. Pediatric tri-lume tubing cross-section, illustrating the complex extrudate shape required from the extrusion die.

Using POLYFLOW, Vygon has performed several die designs for multi-lumen tubes, including precise control of the internal lumens. On the basis of an imposed profile shape and operating conditions, POLYFLOW computed the required die shape. The dies were then manufactured and tested by Vygon and a profile very close to the required one was obtained on the first trial. In addition, the resulting dies have been more robust and stable to handle, yielding more reproducible products with negligible tuning. The result has been increased production rates and a reduction in the number of extruders operating.

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