Liquid metal hydraulic actuation and thermal management based on rotating permanent magnets driven centrifugal pump

Abstract

Liquid metals are quite prominent in the frontier fields of advanced heat dissipation because of their excellent thermal conductivity, electromagnetically drivable capability and wide range of working temperature. However, driving liquid metals that would work in tough situations with requirements of small scale, low vibration, leakage free and corrosion proof still remains a challenge. Here, we proposed a split electromagnetic centrifugal pump for liquid metal hydraulic actuation and thermal management. Owing to the separate design of the rotating magnets and the pump chamber, the metallic fluid in the pump would not contact the outside which well fulfills the above-mentioned demands. As it was experimentally demonstrated, the liquid metal in the pump is directly driven by its electromagnetic interaction with tunable rotational magnetic field. The working performance of the pump was justified through numerical simulations and a series of conceptual measurements. Moreover, the centrifugal pump was found to have achieved an output of 253.4 mL/min and 6.2 kPa. To illustrate the practical value of the centrifugal pump, a mini-channel cooling system and liquid metal enabled reconfigurable antenna system were fabricated and tested, which showed its further potential application in thermal management system and self-cooled reconfigurable antenna device.