Analysis of Flow Field and Pumping Performance for a Valveless Piezoelectric Pump with a Hemisphere-segment Group

Abstract

The pumping and mixing performance of a valveless piezoelectric pump were proposed and studied. A hemisphere-segment group that was fixed in the pump played the role of a valve. Based on the theoretical analysis of the pumping performance, the changes of the fluid velocity field, pressure difference, the coefficient of resistance and flow rate were simulated with FLUENT. Simulation results revealed the relationships among the pressure field, flow rates, row and column numbers, and row and column intervals of the hemisphere-segment group. The simulation results indicated that increasing row and column numbers, increasing row intervals, and decreasing column intervals could all increase the flow resistance difference in pump flow field and thus increased the flow rate. It was also found that the pumping effect was significantly improved by increasing row number than increasing column number; the increasing of row and column intervals could increase the size and strength of the vortex, and then improve the mixing and stirring performance of this pump. Finally, simulation results were tested and verified through pump flow-rate experiments.

The characters exploration of a piezoelectric pump with fishtail-shaped bluffbody

“…Then a new method of setting bluffbodies in the chamber of the pump was proposed. Hu et al (2015) designed a valveless piezoelectric pump with a bluffbody group, by changing the interval and the number of the row and column in the bluffbody group, the pump achieves a significant performance improvement. Huang et al (2010) introduced a valveless piezoelectric pump, to push the fluid streaming through the pump when the piezoelectric actuator vibrates in the channel as the motion of the tail of the swimming fish, which can achieve a flow rate of 6.4 ml/min by 250 V, 460 Hz.…”