Abstract
Piezoelectric micro-jets are based on piezoelectric ink-jet technology and can achieve the drop-on demand requirements. A piezoelectric micro-jet which is designed for bearing lubrication is presented in this paper. In order to analyze the fluid dynamic characteristics of the piezoelectric micro-jet so as to obtain good injection performance, a direct coupling simulation method is proposed in this paper. The effects of inlet and viscous losses in the cavity are taken into account, which are close to the actual conditions in the direct coupling method. The effects of the pulse excitation parameters on the pinch-off time, tail length, velocity, and volume of the droplet are analyzed by the proposed direct coupling method. The pressure distribution inside the cavity of the micro-jet and the status of the droplet formation at different times are also given. In addition, the method is proved to be effective in predicting and analyzing the fluid dynamic characteristics of piezoelectric micro-jets by comparing the simulation results with the experimental results.
Highlights
An indirect simulation method was proposed to analyze the dynamic characteristics of the nozzle part of the piezoelectric micro-jet for lubricating, and the results were consistent with the experimental results, the accuracy was not ideal when the quantitative analyses were carried out [39]
A direct coupling method which is used to simulate the fluid dynamic characteristic of the piezoelectric micro-jet is proposed in this paper, and the model built according to this method is closer to the actual structure of the micro-jet
The effect of the oil supply inlet is taken into account in the direct coupling method, and it has been proven that this effect cannot be ignored when analyzing the influence of the voltage parameters on the injection performance
Summary
As it can achieve drop-on-demand injection, piezoelectric micro-jet technology is widely applied in various fields, such as ejecting metal nanoparticles [1], cell printing [2,3,4], color printing [5], drug delivery [6,7,8], manufacturing [9,10,11,12,13], and sensors [14,15,16,17], etc. In order to improve the injection performance, the influences of excitation parameters on fluid dynamic characteristics should be analyzed. Simulations have been used to study the characteristics of the micro-jet, as they can help to understand the outcomes of experiments and can help to pave the way to new designs. An indirect simulation method was proposed to analyze the dynamic characteristics of the nozzle part of the piezoelectric micro-jet for lubricating, and the results were consistent with the experimental results, the accuracy was not ideal when the quantitative analyses were carried out [39]. Quantitatively analyses are carried out to study the influences of pulse voltage parameters on the injection performance, and the validity of this method is proved by the experiments. In order to improve the uniformity of lubrication, two nozzles are symmetrical designed
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