A Closed Device to Generate Vortex Flow Using PZT

Abstract

This paper reports for the first time a millimeter scale fully packaged device which generates a vortex flow of high velocity. The flow which is simply actuated by a PZT diaphragm circulates with a higher velocity after each actuating circle to form a vortex in a desired chamber. The design of such device is firstly conducted by a numerical analysis using OpenFOAM. Several numerical results are considered as the base of our experiment where a flow vortex is observed by a high speed camera. The present device is potential in various applications related to the inertial sensing, fluidic amplifier and micro/nano particle trapping and mixing.