Control of the Characteirstics of a Viscous Micropump with a Cylindrical Rotor Uning a Gate Installed in the Wall

Abstract

Various micropumps are devised, researched and developed for the liquid supply systems in the fields of micro machine, medical engineering and biotechnology and so on. In the present study, a new viscous micropump with a cylindrical rotor in a duct was presented. A gate is devised and installed in the wall over the cylindrical rotor to control the pump characteristics, i.e. the flow field and the pressure performance. The model experiment and the numerical simulation are performed. In the model experiment, the low Reynolds number flow is realized by using glycerin as a working fluid for a centimeter-scale (non-micrometer-scale) pump model. In the numerical simulation, the commercial software STAR-CD is used. Qualitative and quantitative agreements between experimental and numerical results are obtained with respect to the flow field and the pressure performance. The installed gata changes the flow field and accordingly the pressure performance. Therefore, it can be said that the pump characteristics can be controlled by using the gate.