The paper presents the results of investigations concerning the noninvasive method of estimating the actual volume of the blood chamber of the POLVAD-EXT type ventricular assist device (VAD) during its operation. The proposed method is based on the principle of Helmholtz's acoustic resonance. Both the theory, main stages of the development of the measurement method as well as the practical implementation of the proposed method in the physical model of the POLVAD-EXT device are dealt with. The paper contains the results of static measurements by means of the proposed method (conducted at the Department of Optoelectronics, Silesian University of Technology) as well as the dynamic measurements taken at the Foundation of Cardiac Surgery Development (Zabrze, Poland) with the professional model of the human cardiovascular system. The results of these measurements prove that the proposed method allows to estimate the actual blood chamber volume with uncertainties below 10%.

A computer measurement system, designed and built by authors, dedicated to location and description of partial discharges (PD) in oil power transformers examined by means of the acoustic emission (AE) method is presented. The measurement system is equipped with 8 measurement channels and ensures: monitoring of signals, registration of data in real time within a band of 25–1000 kHz in laboratory and real conditions, basic and advanced analysis of recorded signals. The basic analysis carried out in the time, frequency and time-frequency domains deals with general properties of the AE signals coming from PDs. The advanced analysis, performed in the discrimination threshold domain, results in identification of signals coming from different acoustic sources as well as location of these sources in the examined transformers in terms of defined by authors descriptors and maps of these descriptors on the side walls of the tested transformer tank. Examples of typical results of laboratory tests carried out with the use of the built-in measurement system are presented.