Analytical and Experimental Studies of Diffuser/Nozzle Valve-Less Micro-Pump

A valve-less micro-pump was realized with just one diffuser/nozzle element. The pressure-loss in a nozzle is lower than that in a diffuser, and therefore one-way flow may be realized in the nozzle direction. The frequency characteristics and the pump characteristics are measured. Dimensionless numbers are introduced to rearrange the measured data and to understand the physical mechanisms of the micro-pump. Simplified analysis was done for unsteady operation of the pump by considering the channel geometries and pressure-loss coefficients based on Bernoulli’s theorem. The calculated pump characteristics agreed with the measured ones. Numerical calculations were made using the commercial CFD (computational fluid dynamics) code CFX. The calculated flow patterns showed differences between the diffuser and nozzle directions.