Equivalent electrical network for performance characterization of piezoelectric peristaltic micropump

Abstract

Utilizing an electronic-hydraulic analogy, this study develops an equivalent electrical network of a piezoelectric peristaltic micropump which has not been modeled the whole system operation completely by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or equivalent electrical network so far due to its excessive complicated structure. The validity of the proposed model is verified by comparing the simulation results obtained using the SPICE (simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis) software package for flow rate spectrum and its maximum state of a typical micropump with the experimental observations for two working fluids, namely DI water and blood. The simulation results predict a maximum flow rate frequency and flow rate of 280 Hz and 43.23 lL/min, respectively, for water, and 210 Hz and 24.12 lL/min for blood. The corresponding experimental results are found to be 300 Hz and 41.58 lL/min for water and 250 Hz and 23.75 lL/min for blood. The relatively poorer agreement between the two sets of results when using blood as the working fluid is thought to be the result of the non-Newtonian nature of blood, which induces a more complex, non-linear flow behavior within the micropump. Having validated the proposed model, the equivalent network is used to perform a systematic analysis of the correlation between the principal micropump design parameters and operating conditions and the micropump performance. The results confirm the validity of the equivalent electrical network model as the first microfluidic modeling tool for optimizing the design of peristaltic micropumps and for predicting their performance.

Steady and unsteady flow analysis in microdiffusers and micropumps: a critical review

“…Piezoelectrically actuated diaphragms (Koch et al 1998;Park et al 1999;Morris and Forster 2000;Fan et al 2005;Wang et al 2006;Hwang et al 2007;Jang and Yu 2008;Wiederkehr et al 2008;Hsu and Le 2008), which are among the most widely used devices for actuating micropumps, produce relatively large displacement magnitudes and forces and fast mechanical responses. A comparison of various micropump actuation mechanisms shows that piezoelectrically actuated diaphragm micropumps are among those which have high flow rates per unit area (Iverson and Garimella 2008).…”

A micropump based on water potential difference in plants

“…Reported micropumps can be classified into two main categories: mechanical micropumps and non-mechanical micropumps. Mechanical micropumps contain moving parts and utilize piezoelectric (Hsu and Le 2009), electrostatic (Bertarelli et al 2011), thermo-pneumatic (Chia et al 2011), pneumatic (Yang et al 2009), optical (Maruo et al 2009) or acoustic (Nguyen et al 2000;Wang et al 2010) to drive the moving parts. These micropumps are still not scalable to achieve portability and miniaturization due to their limits, such as relying on external power supplies or specialized equipments, pulsatile flow, complicated system design, as well as expensive fabrication process (Good et al 2006;Zhang et al 2007;Woias 2005).…”

Modeling of a Piezoelectric MEMS Micropump Dedicated to Insulin Delivery and Experimental Validation Using Integrated Pressure Sensors: Application to Partial Occlusion Management

“…More recently, thanks to progress in the computational domain, models can be driven using software such as ANSYS for a complete electro-fluid-solid simulation [4]. Experimental validation of the modeling of a piezoelectric micropump was already reported for a device with no-moving-part valves [5] and a valveless [6] and piezoelectric peristaltic micropump [7]. This paper presents a piezoelectric positive-displacement MEMS micropump having two check valves and a fixed stroke volume [8,9].…”