Air is life. However, be it a medical emergency or other health related conditions, sometimes, the spontaneous breathing is not sufficient. In medical treatments there are generally two different techniques: invasive (IMV) and non-invasive ventilation (NIV). Which of both will be used, depends on the patient’s situation. They assist or replace spontaneous breathing, reduce the effort of breathing or reverse life-threatening respiratory derangement for example in intensive care units. Low vibration and noise, high speed and dynamics and most of all reliability and long lifetime are a must for drive systems used in medical ventilation. That is why FAULHABER is a perfect fit for medical ventilation applications.
Since the introduction of the Pulmotor by Heinrich Dräger in 1907 as one of the first devices for artificial ventilation, there have been several steps towards modern, contemporary systems. Whilst the Pulmotor was alternating between positive and negative pressures, the iron lung, used in a large scale for the first time during polio outbreaks in the 1940s and 1950s, worked only with negative pressure. Nowadays, also thanks to innovations in the drive technology, almost all systems use positive pressure concepts. State of the art are turbine driven ventilators or combinations of pneumatic and turbine systems. Very often, these are driven by FAULHABER.
Turbine based ventilation offers several advantages. It does not depend on a supply of compressed air and rather use ambient air or a low pressure oxygen source. The performance is superior as leak detection algorithms help compensate leaks, which are common in NIV. Furthermore, these systems are able to switch between ventilation modes that rely on different control-parameters such as volume or pressure.
Brushless DC motors from FAULHABER like the BHx or B series are optimized for such high speed applications, with low vibration and noise. The low inertia design allows a very short response time. FAULHABER offers a high level of flexibility and customization possibilities, so that the drive systems can be adapted to individual customer’s needs. Portable ventilation systems furthermore benefit from low power consumption and heat generation due to our highly efficient drives.
