Dynamics analysis and experiment on the fishtailing type of valveless piezoelectric pump with rectangular vibrator

Abstract

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.