A valveless piezoelectric pump with rotatable unsymmetrical slopes is developed in this research.It has the following features:The pump integrates driving and transporting,and it can mix different fluids while transporting them.In this paper,firstly,the design of the valveless piezoelectric pump with rotatable unsymmetrical slopes was proposed,and the single-direction flow principle was explained.Then,the fluid mechanics model of the valveless piezoelectric pump with rotatable unsymmetrical slopes was established.Meanwhile,the numerical simulation of the pump was performed.Finally,the experiments on relationship between the rotation angles of the slope and the flow rates were conducted.The experimental results showed that the maximum flow was 32.32 mL min 1.The maximum relative error between the theoretical results and the experimental ones was 14.59%.For the relationship between rotation angles and flow ratio of two inlets,the relative error between the experimental and theoretical maxima was 3.75%.Thus,the experiments proved the feasibility of the pump design and verified the theory.
In recent years, the research and development of piezoelectric pumps have become an increasingly popular topic. Minimization, structure simplification and stronger output become the focus of piezoelectric pumps’ research due to its possible application in MEMS technology. The valveless fishtailing piezoelectric pump, neither a volumetric nor a rotating pump, was invented according to the bionics of fish swimming. With assumption that the head of the fish is fixed while its tail is swinging, fluid would flow toward the end of the tail, achieving the function of a valveless pump. This type of pumps creates a new branch for the piezoelectric pump research, which is proposed for the first time in this paper. The relationship between the flow rates and vibrating frequencies was derived from the interaction between the vibrator and fluid. Numerical simulations with FEM software were conducted to study the first and second vibration modes of the piezoelectric vibrator. The results showed that the maximum amplitude of the vibrator was 0.9 mm at the frequency of 76 Hz for the first vibration mode, while the maximum amplitude of the vibrator was 0.22 mm at the frequency of 781 Hz for the second vibration mode. Experiments were conducted with the Doppler laser vibration measurement system, and the results were compared to those of the FEM simulation. It was shown that in the first vibration mode the piezoelectric vibrator reached its maximum amplitude of about 0.9 mm at the driving frequency of 49 Hz, which gives the flow rate of 2.0 mL/min, in the second vibration mode, the maximum amplitude was about 0.25 mm at the frequency of 460 Hz with the flow rate being 6.4 mL/min.
HUANG Yi1, ZHANG JianHui1, HU XiaoQi1, XIA QiXiao2, HUANG WeiQing1 & ZHAO ChunSheng1 1 Department of Aerospace Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
Among most traditional piezo water cooling systems, piezoelectric valve pumps are adopted as their driving sources. The valves in these pumps induce problems of shock and vibration and also make their structure complicated, which is uneasy to minimize and reduce their reliability and applicability of the whole system. In order to avoid these problems caused by valve structure, a novel valveless piezoelectric pump is developed, which integrates both functions of transforming and cooling. The pump’s Y-shape tree-like construction not only increases the efficiency of cooling but also the system reliability and applicability. Firstly, a multistage Y-shape treelike bifurcate tube is proposed, then a valveless piezoelectric pump with multistage Y-shape treelike bifurcate tubes is designed and its working principle is analyzed. Then, the theoretical analysis of flow resistance characteristics and the flow rate of the valveless piezoelectric pump are performed. Meanwhile, commercial software CFX is employed to perform the numerical simulation for the pump. Finally, this valveless piezoelectric pump is fabricated, the relationship between the flow rates and driving frequency, as well as the relationship between the back pressure and the driving frequency are experimentally investigated. The experimental results show that the maximum flow rate is 35.6 mL/min under 100 V peak-to-peak voltage (10.3 Hz) power supply, and the maximum back pressure is 55 mm H2O under 100 V (9 Hz) power supply, which validates the feasibility of the valveless piezoelectric pump with multistage Y-shape treelike bifurcate tubes. The proposed research provides certain references for the design of valveless piezoelectric pump and improves the reliability of piezo water cooling systems.
