Structure Design And Experimental Research Of Intellectualized Medical Air Insulation Blanket

Hypothermia frequently happens during the medical operation and the late rehabilitation process, and the most applicable way of the heat preservation is considered a adoption of a Medical Air Insulation Blanket (or MAIB). However, the conventional MAIB adopts manual adjustment of the air temperature and bears some disadvantages such as hard operation, low precision and sluggish response in the control of the body temperature. To abate these disadvantages, it is required to intellectualize the conventional MAIB and enhance its insulation efficiency of heat as well, which is also the develop trend of the MAIB nowadays.This paper deals with some key problems appearing in the intellectualization of the MAIB. A new approach, which has acquired Invention Patent (Patent Application Number: 200910113817.9), is proposed to adjust the shell temperature of human body via controlling the temperature of the output air from the insulation gasbag on the basis of the desired monitor and control functions. The whole structure and function of the intellectualized MAIB, which has been granted a Utility Model Patent (Patent Number: ZL200920140419.1), is put forward according to the new approach. After a detail examination of the current control strategies of air temperature and the features of MAIB, a subsection control algorithm which combines a simple control and auto-adapted fuzzy PID control is adopted, and a mathematical model for the air temperature control system is established and simulations are conducted by the MATLAB software to validate model. The structure, the control software and hardware of the intellectualized MAIB are designed rationally and several synthesized debug and simulation test are performed on the function of the main control system. The relations between the temperature and the flux of the air from the gasbag outlet and the energy field of the shell temperature are presented in the paper too.The research results show that a reasonable intellectualized MAIB should be composed of an air supply system, insulation gasbags and the connection pipelines between them. The simulation analysis and test results show that the performance requirement of the intellectualized MAIB can be met by the subsection control algorithm, and there is a diversity shell temperature with the locations on human body and a difference between the shell temperature and the ideal core temperature. The self-built intellectualized MAIB test platform can realize the control and communication with PC via the human machine interfaces; furthermore, it can record, save and display the real-time temperature in curve for instant observing or inquiring later. The self-developed intellectualized MAIB is proved to be fast, stable and accurate in work which can certainly level the work loads of medical staffs.The research results achieved by the present research work will provide an applicable approach for intelligent control of an intellectualized MAIB, and lay a theoretical fundament and provides technical supports for development of the intellectualized MAIB with fully independent intellectual property.The research work is supported by the Educative Department of Guangxi Province for Scientific Research Subject Foundation (Grant No.200808LX136, entitled with Key Technologies Research and Product Development of Intellectualized Medical Air Insulation Blanket) and Guangxi Province Scientific Research Innovation projects for graduate students (Grant No. 2009105950802M03, entitled with Research on the Key Technologies of Intellectualized Medical Air Insulation Blanket).