Investigation and validation of the dynamic response of an acoustically levitated particle using the lattice Boltzmann method

The stable levitation of an analyte sample in an acoustic levitator is a primary requirement for accurate x-ray characterization of its scientific structure. A rigid particle oscillates in an under-damped manner when introduced into the node of established standing acoustic waves. This investigation has employed the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), a computational fluid dynamics technique, for the analysis of such rigid particle dynamics in acoustic levitation. The simulation uses the two dimensional and nine velocity (D2Q9) Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook formulation to levitate a rigid 1.6 mm diameter nylon (ρ = 1150 kg/m3) particle in the air at standard pressure and temperature conditions. The presented work is the first reported simulation of realistic acoustic levitator boundary conditions using the LBM. The simulation can capture the particle–fluid interactions that produce dynamic levitation at less than one-period timescale in the ultrasonic frequency regime. An experiment was conducted by levitating a 1.6 mm-diameter nylon sphere to estimate the oscillations, and the oscillating frequency was found to be 50 Hz. The dynamic simulation results are consistent with experimental results for particle oscillations within the same order of magnitude, indicating that LBM formulation can be successfully used to study acoustic levitation to understand and mitigate particle jitter. The distortion of the acoustic field due to a levitating particle’s presence was also analyzed to demonstrate how the presence of the particle can disrupt adjacent levitating nodes.