Abstract
In recent years, physics-based computer models have been increasingly applied to design the drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet devices. The initial design stage for these devices often requires a fast turnaround time of computer models, because it usually involves a massive screening of a large number of design parameters. Thus, in the present study, a 1D model is developed to achieve the fast prediction of droplet ejection process from DOD devices, including the droplet breakup and coalescence. A popular 1D slender-jet method (Egger, 1994) is adopted in this study. The fluid dynamics in the nozzle region is described by a 2D axisymmetric unsteady Poiseuille flow model. Droplet formation and nozzle fluid dynamics are coupled, and hence solved together, to simulate the inkjet droplet ejection. The arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian method is employed to solve the governing equations. Numerical methods have been proposed to handle the breakup and coalescence of droplets. The proposed methods are implemented in an in-house developed MATLAB code. A series of validation examples have been carried out to evaluate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed 1D model. Finally, a case study of the inkjet droplet ejection with different Ohnesorge number (Oh) is presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed 1D model for DOD inkjet process. Our study has shown that 1D model can significantly reduce the computational time (usually less than one minute) yet with acceptable accuracy, which makes it very useful to explore the large parameter space of inkjet devices in a short amount of time.
Highlights
Inkjet technologies have advanced significantly since the first commercialization in 1970s, with focus in text and graphic printing
Our study has shown that 1D model can significantly reduce the computational time yet with acceptable accuracy, which makes it very useful to explore the large parameter space of inkjet devices in a short amount of time
The objective of this paper is to investigate whether 1D simulations can be applied to DOD inkjet droplet ejection through a comprehensive validation
Summary
Inkjet technologies have advanced significantly since the first commercialization in 1970s, with focus in text and graphic printing. Due to its ability to precisely deliver picoliter-scale volumes of liquid at high speed and low cost, inkjet technologies have already extended beyond the traditional printing area into a wide variety of emerging applications, such as additive manufacturing [2], electronic device prototyping [3], pharmaceutics [4], tissue engineering [5] and spray cooling of electronics [6]. Inkjet devices are classified as one of two kinds: continuous inkjet (CIJ) and drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet, which are distinguished by the form of the ejected liquid. Depending on the actuation of the driving pulse, there are two major varieties of DOD inkjets: piezoelectric inkjet (PIJ) and thermal inkjet (TIJ) [7].
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