Experimental study on pressure pulsation in piezo driven reed valve pump

In this study, we designed a reed valve pump using a piezoelectric device (PZT) as a power source and analyzed its performance. Numerical analysis and preliminary design were carried out in order to construct a pump chamber, and a valve port design was used so as to take advantage of the characteristics of a reed valve. The performance of the manufactured pump was investigated with glycerin solution, a working fluid. As expected, the flow rate of the pump increased with operating frequency as long as sufficient pressure relaxation could be given. From the measured results of the time resolved pressure, the maximum and minimum pressures were determined by the pressure relaxation. The investigation about the duty ratio of the square wave operation probed that the 50 % duty provided the maximum performance, and the duty ratio could be reduced at a high operating frequency without a performance reduction.