Coupled FEM simulation for the characterization of the fluid flow within a micromachined cantilever valve

This paper reports a new simulation method coupling two finite-element programmes to characterize the volume flow within a passive silicon cantilever valve. For the exchange of data between the mechanical simulation tool ANSYS and the fluidic simulation tool FLOW3D, Mathcad was employed. Several iterative runs, using successive transfer of data, were performed to reach convergent solutions for each input case. The velocity distribution at the entrance and the pressure distribution below the cantilever were calculated. Finally, the volume flow of the cantilever valve was characterized by varying the input pressure between 2 and 64 kPa.