A High-Performance Synthetic Jet Piezoelectric Air Pump with Petal-Shaped Channel

The synthetic jet piezoelectric air pump is a potential miniature device for electronic cooling. In order to improve the performance of the device, a small-sized synthetic jet piezoelectric air pump is proposed in this work, which is mainly characterized by petal-shaped inlet channels. First, the structure and working principle of the piezoelectric vibrator and the proposed pump are analyzed. Then, three synthetic jet piezoelectric air pumps with different inlet channels are compared. These inlets are the direct channels, the diffuser/nozzle channels, and the petal-shaped channels, respectively. Furthermore, the performance of the synthetic jet piezoelectric air pump with the petal-shaped inlet channels is optimized by orthogonal tests. Finally, the simulation was used to investigate the heat dissipation capability of the synthetic jet piezoelectric pump. The experimental results show that among the three inlet channels, the petal-shaped channel can greatly improve the performance of the pump. The unoptimized pump with petal-shaped channels has a maximum flow rate of 1.8929 L/min at 100 V, 3.9 kHz. Additionally, the optimized pump with petal-shaped channels reaches a maximum flow rate of 3.0088 L/min at 100 V, 3.7 kHz, which is 58.95% higher than the unoptimized one. The proposed synthetic jet piezoelectric air pump greatly improves the output performance and has the advantages of simple structure, low cost, and easy integration. The convective heat transfer coefficient of the synthetic jet piezoelectric pump is 28.8 W/(m2·°C), which can prove that the device has a better heat dissipation capability.