Development of a novel piezoelectric-actuated inertial pump using bionic valve

Sampling fluids from the small-diameter deep pipeline is a challenging problem. In this paper, a very simple, piezoelectric-actuated inertial pump (PIP) is developed using a bionic valve to solve these problems. The PIP consists of simple components, including a cantilever beam piezoelectric actuator, a hard tube, and a bionic valve made of silicone. The fluid is driven by the inertial force generated in the vibration process of the tube. A new bionic valve inspired by a heart valve has been designed which has the advantages of small flow resistance and large flow area. The authors described the working principle of PIP in detail, established the flow characteristics model of the bionic valve, and used COMSOL Multiphysics to analyze the characteristics of the bionic valve. By comparing the response characteristics of the bionic valve with different tilt angles, the optimal Angle was obtained. Finally, the experimental and simulation results were compared, and the basic performance of PIP was tested. The experimental results showed that: When the tilting angle was 45° and the valve hole diameter was 6 mm, when the voltage was 98 V and the frequency was 24.5 Hz, the maximum output flow of the piezoelectric pump was 170.25 ml/min.