Three-dimensional electro-fluid-structural interaction simulation for pumping performance evaluation of a valveless micropump

In this paper, the pumping performances of a piezoelectric valveless micropump are investigated in terms of the three-dimensional electro-fluid-structural interaction. A valveless micropump that was developed in previous work is composed of a four-layer lightweight piezocomposite actuator, a polydimethylsiloxane ( PDMS) pump chamber and two diffusers. The solution of micropump simulations can be divided into a structural domain and a fluid domain. ANSYS and ANSYS CFX are used for the structural and fluid domains, respectively. Both the structural and fluid domains are coupled in the three-dimensional simulation. The present method is validated by comparing the calculated pumping performance with the previous experimental results. We found that the resonant driven frequency of the micropump is 220 Hz, which is close to the experimental value of 200 Hz. The maximum difference of the net flow rate between the simulation and the experiment is around 30%. The difference can be explained in terms of a feature modeling limitation of the nozzle-diffuser element. The characteristics of the valveless micropump are also investigated in relation to the effects of the driven frequency.