The effect of actuator parameters on the performance of a liquid-jet hammer associated with its jet behavior

Abstract

Bi-stable fluidic amplifier containing no moving parts was used for switching fluid flow passing through it into an actuator in a liquid-jet hammer. So far, there has been no design basis for developing a liquid-jet hammer with high performance. To provide a guidance, this paper elaborates on the computational fluid dynamics simulation method for investigating the effect of actuator parameters on the performance of a liquid-jet hammer associated with its jet behavior. Given that couple mechanism exists between the flow field in the bi-stable fluidic amplifier and the actuator, dynamic mesh technique and a user-defined function written in C programming language were used to update the mesh in the simulations. Two evaluation criteria—pressure recovery and flux utilization ratio—for a liquid-jet hammer were used in this study. Experimental tests were conducted to verify the simulation results, by which the accuracy and reliability of this computational fluid dynamics simulation method was proved. Besides, comprehensive analysis of the flow behavior in the fluidic amplifier of a liquid-jet hammer was performed by the use of computational fluid dynamics visualization method.