A high flow-rate single-chamber valveless piezoelectric pump with airfoil baffles

Valveless piezoelectric pumps have a simple structure and excellent reliability and are not harmful to the transmission medium. However, the output flow of such pumps is low, limiting their practical applicability. When fluid flows over airfoils in the forward or reverse direction, the flow resistance coefficient is unequal due to the different energy loss, and hence airfoils have the one-way cut-off performance. Therefore, airfoil baffles are integrated into the piezoelectric pump in this work, and a single-chamber valveless piezoelectric pump with airfoil baffles is proposed to research the possibility of increasing its output flow rate. The flow fields in three different airfoil tubes are simulated using the flow simulation software ANSYS CFX. The results show that the NACA0015 airfoil tube has the highest reverse-flow energy dissipation and the highest forward-to-reverse-flow energy dissipation ratio. Subsequently, three different valveless piezoelectric pump prototypes are fabricated and tested. Among them, the pump with the NACA0015 airfoil has the maximum flow rate, and the flow rate reaches 235.56 mL/min with a maximum output back pressure of 842.8 Pa when the driving voltage is 100 V. The study results are helpful to further optimize the structural design of valveless piezoelectric pumps, enhance their output performance, and improve their practicability.