A piezoelectric pump with composite chamber: using bluff body to improve its anti-clogging ability

Abstract Piezoelectric pumps are widely used in biomedicine, chip cooling, fuel cells and so on. However, existing valve-based piezoelectric pumps suffer from the problem of easy clogging. In order to solve the problem, a piezoelectric pump with composite chamber (PPCC) is proposed. The composite chamber, consisting of drive chamber and flow chamber, which provides the PPCC with excellent output performance by amplifying the compression ratio. Meanwhile, a bluff body is set in the drive chamber, and the vortex flow around the bluff body is able to adsorb air bubbles and other impurities, preventing impurities from entering the drive chamber, the bluff body provides the PPCC with strong anti-clogging ability. Multi-physics field simulation is established, which verifies the PPCC is feasible. The fluid inside the pump chamber is simulated, and it is concluded that the 90-arc bluff body is optimal, favoring the formation of high-speed vortices. Furthermore, a prototype is fabricated and experimentally investigated. The experimental results show that the PPCC has excellent performance in pumping liquid and gas. At 300 Vpp , the PPCC delivered a maximum flow rate of 235.9 ml min −1 for air and 24.07 ml min −1 for water. The anti-clogging ability of PPCC is verified through bubble resistance experiments, which demonstrates the composite chamber and bluff body effectively prevent foreign impurities from entering the drive chamber. The PPCC provides a new approach to microfluidic pumping devices.