Mechanical engineering support (#FEA, #CFD) of medical device for Kinneir Dufort

Consumer Medical Electronics Device to promote Smoking Cessation

‘Kinneir Dufort is a user-centred innovation & product development. Designing a better world. We combine creative, technical and user experience expertise to deliver world-changing products and services for medical, consumer and industrial clients.’

Source: Kinneir Dufort website

Form Lab supported the development of a new class of consumer medical electronic device aimed at smoking cessation for a global pharmaceutical company.

Our brief was to inform design and engineering decisions through the application and analysis of data. As a data-enabled engineering consultancy this was music to our ears and gave us something to really get our teeth into. 

We kicked things off by conducting a review of the current technologies, reverse engineering best in class devices to establish a baseline.

We built on this baseline by simulating and testing novel concepts and (design) schemes, quantifying performance using computational aided engineering methods. Thus delaying the requirement for physical prototypes and allowing early stage search optimisation.

These activities provided key justification for the development of a novel ceramic composite vaporising element and microfluidic wick for controlled dosing.

Leveraging our knowledge of the system engineering approach we were tasked with extending our data-led design and engineering support to optimise design variables providing a clear route for development, minimising prototyping iterations and drastically compressing intervals between feedback loops.

Conducting conjugate heat transfer analysis of the dosing delivery assembly identified issues with restrictions in the flow path causing low mass transfer of the dose. Further analysis and testing with the use of an artificial lung test setup, highlighted a condensation issue that was remedied by relocation of the vaporiser giving the device its distinctive look.

Our support continued through to pharmacokinetic (PK) trials and we’re eagerly awaiting the results of the studies.

Interested to see if Form Lab can help with your project? Get in touch to see if we can help!