The Development Of The Drainage Tube

Drainage tube is more wildly employed in the clinical surgery for the eliminations of irritant substances, such as effusion, hematocele, empyema and foreign matters, etc., which proves conducive to the inflammation diminishing and wound healing, and thus new infections, diffusions and complications can be prevented, meanwhile, locally pathological changes can also be observed. Currently, single-lumen tube is commonly applied clinically, however, for its single usage, when rinse, drainage and supporting, etc. are needed to be simultaneously conducted, it’s usually necessary to put several drainage tubes, which not only brings trouble to the surgeon, but also pains to the patient. In this paper, with respect to the existing problem, a new drainage structure was developed.The newly designed structure, a new double-cavity cannula for irrigation and drainage, is composed of the irrigation cavity, the drainage cavity and the bore membrane, with irrigation bores opened in the membrane. There is an irrigation connector and a drainage connector respectively connected the irrigation cavity and the drainage cavity at the end of the tube. In specific applications, the washing fluid flows through the irrigation cavity and reaches the bore membrane through the charging bore, when a spraying irrigation around the tube diameter can be achieved, thus the washing fluid and the foreign matters can flow out of the body from the drainage cavity.Based on literature studies, the new drainage tube was determined to adopt the silicone-coated structure, whose wall is double layered with different materials respectively, i.e. the inner natural latex layer and the outer silicone coating one. Thus, not only the favorable biocompatibility, excellent mechanical properties, remarkable processability and performance controllability, etc. of the silicone rubber can be brought into full play, but also the high flexibility, good air permeability, anti-bacteria and durable performance of the natural latex can be maintained. Moreover, both the high cost when entirely made of silicone rubber and the allergy when entirely made of natural latex can be avoided.The two kinds of materials are both high polymer elastic materials, and the irrigation process may result in a greater elastic deformation of the pipe, thus influencing the irrigation effect. So as to determine the exact irrigation effect of this brand-new drainage tube, optimize its structure and research into the flow characteristics of the washing fluid before batch production, a step-by-step modeling and association analysis in combination with actual working conditions was proposed, while integrated application of software including UG, ANSYS and FLUENT to ensure an accurate analysis. First and foremost, the fluid pressure distribution inside the tube was analyzed by FLUENT, and on this basis, the static analysis of the tube was conducted by ANSYS, wherein its elastic deformation was analyzed, according to which the model for fluid analysis after deformation was established, and the final analysis of the fluid flow characteristics was performed through the application of FLUENT. As a result, the new drainage tube, with a reasonable structure, could achieve the desired irrigation effect.Finally, the mold was developed and the molding process of the drainage tube was designed, and then a sample tube was manufactured for experiments, through which both the computer-aided analysis result and the reasonability of the structural design were further validated.