UH Hurricane Center Learns Lessons From Ike

If hindsight is always 20-20, wouldn’t it be valuable to ask what we would do if a storm the magnitude of Hurricane Ike should strike the Gulf Coast again? One University of Houston professor has some novel ideas he’s exploring with a new hurricane center launched just before this monster storm hit.

Experiencing firsthand many of the difficulties that followed Hurricane Ike, Cumaraswamy Vipulanandan and a dozen other professors from across the Cullen College of Engineering and other UH colleges are pooling their expertise to research recovery protocols to ensure modern conveniences are restored more quickly after future such natural disasters.

The Texas Hurricane Center for Innovative Technology (THC-IT) is a university-industry consortium, working with federal, state and local agencies, as well as other university affiliates, to coordinate efforts before, during and after a hurricane in the region.

“We are striving to be a world-class testing and research facility that develops hurricane protection products and systems, as well as repair technologies to mitigate the losses, both on and offshore,” said Vipulanandan, a professor of civil engineering and the center’s director. “We also will serve as an educational forum for preparedness and emergency planning and response, developing approaches for industries, businesses and communities to recover rapidly in the wake of a disaster.”

The first order of business after Ike is a survey Vipulanandan has been circulating that captures individual experiences to help analyze how quickly recovery has been felt and the extent of damages suffered by the city and county. The survey is just the first step to developing procedures for faster recovery. UH professors also are networking with local, state, and federal agencies to refine current practices, such as preparedness, damage mitigation, evacuation, and rapid recovery, and synchronize them across agencies.

Not only will these efforts translate to improved recovery protocols, but also to the development of proprietary new “smart materials” for use in hurricane protection and mitigation systems. These smart materials are known for their ability to change their properties in a controllable manner in response to their environment. The center’s researchers also plan to create test facilities and standards to evaluate these new products.

“We will focus on developing new methods for speedy recovery of the public and private sectors after a hurricane,” he said. “Studies will focus on developing materials and technologies for rapidly repairing everything from houses to complex civil infrastructures.”

As the area continues to recover, these researchers are doing what they can to learn about how Texas weathered Ike. This knowledge, Vipulanandan said, will jump-start partnerships among professionals from various universities and industries across the Gulf Coast region.

Artificial-Heart Technology
Holds Promise for Alternatives

Patients on the waiting list for a heart transplant soon may have more options thanks to a new device being developed by the Texas Heart Institute in collaboration with two University of Houston professors.

As part of a biomedical research team working to create a pulseless total artificial heart (TAH), Matthew Franchek and Ralph Metcalfe, both mechanical engineering professors in the Cullen College of Engineering at UH, are focusing on developing a control system that emulates how the natural heart responds to physiological conditions within the body. The TAH is designed to perform the function of both the right and left ventricles, and these advancements in technology are meant to enable it to respond to the body’s changing need for blood.

The professors say the complexity of existing devices that just mimic the pulsating pump action of the natural heart not only makes their size nearly impossible for use in smaller adults and children, but also causes reliability concerns, such as failure due to mechanical fatigue. The proposed TAH replaces the pulsatile feature with two pulseless continuous flow pumps, each about the size of a C battery. The pumps also are unique in that their cardiac output automatically adjusts to physiological needs. To ensure proper integration of the TAH on a patient-to-patient basis, the UH team will be adding onboard intelligence to the TAH using automatic controls.

One pump would be dedicated to the pulmonary loop, carrying oxygen-depleted blood away from the heart to the lungs and returning oxygenated blood back to the heart. The other pump would drive the systemic loop, carrying oxygenated blood away from the heart to the body and returning deoxygenated blood back to the heart.

Franchek’s and Metcalfe’s roles in the project will focus on the mathematical modeling of the cardiovascular system to create a feedback controller that will seamlessly integrate the device with a recipient’s body. The overarching goal is to create a robust continuous-flow ventricular assist device that is smaller and more reliable than the current pulsating pumps that mimic the natural heart. The mathematical models of the cardiovascular system also will be evaluated as a possible means to health prognostics and diagnostics. In addition, information from the controllers will be used to assess current conditions of the blood, including viscosity, which is critical to maintaining patient health.

The UH professors are among those named on a $2.8 million federal grant from the National Institutes of Health. During the next four years, Franchek and Metcalfe will work alongside the lead investigator and inventor of the proposed TAH, Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazier, chief of the Center for Cardiac Support and director of surgical research at the Texas Heart Institute, as well as professors from Rice University, other Texas Heart Institute physicians and researchers from MicroMed Technology of Houston, to create this breakthrough device.