• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.979-984
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• 2007

This paper presents a new control mechanism for the proportional pressure control which is accomplished by electro-pneumatic regulator using two PZT actuators. The electro-pneumatic regulator of this study is 2-stage type and consists of two piezoelectric actuators, a controller and a main poppet valve. The piezoelectric actuators are multilayer bender type and are controlled by digital signal. Proportional pressure control technique is very important because that can derive improvement of product quality and driving ability in the pneumatic system. Solenoid actuator method for pressure control is widely used but this actuator has a high power consumption characteristics. So new actuator is required for the energy saving. In this study, PZT actuator for the pressure control was fabricated and experimented instead of the conventional type solenoid actuator. Experiments for the new control mechanism of the elector-pneumatic regulator were operated under the input condition of 0.4[MPa] and it was confirmed that this mechanism has a good control characteristics to the response sensitivity and hysteresis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.10
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• pp.681-687
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• 2016

It is essential for micro jet injectors in the biomedical sector to operate under high pressure. High pressure injection, however, is accompanied by high volumes. On/Off valves that can be operated at high speeds have been used to address this problem. In this research, piezoelectric actuators which have a response frequency of the order of hundreds of kilohertz were used as the On/Off valve and experiments were applied. Researchers developed a controller to precisely manipulate the piezoelectric valve with various waveforms. They also fabricated five types of nozzles to consider the effect of nozzle type on injection. This allowed researchers to manipulate and confirm factors that can affect the injection volume and force. Results of this experiment have shown how to decrease the injection volume and increase the injection force. and it is predicted that the optimized injection volume and force value can be determined depending on the skin type.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.69-77
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• 2011

A peristaltic micropump with lightweight piezo-composite actuator (LIPCA) membrane valves is presented. The micropump contained three cylinder chambers that were connected by microchannels and two active membrane valves. A circular miniature LIPCA was developed and manufactured to be used as actuating diaphragms. The LIPCA diaphragm acted as an active membrane valve that alternate between open and closed positions at the inlet and outlet in order to produce high pumping pressure. In this LIPCA, a lead zirconium titanate ceramic with a thickness of 0.1 mm was used as an active layer. The results confirmed that the actuator produced a large out-of-plane deflection. During the design process, a coupled field analysis was conducted in order to predict the actuating behavior of the LIPCA diaphragm; the behavior of the actuator was investigated from both a theoretical and experimental perspective. The active membrane valve concept was introduced as a means for increasing pumping pressure, and microelectromechanical system techniques were used to fabricate the peristaltic micropump. The pumping performance was analyzed experimentally in terms of the flow rate, pumping pressure and power consumption.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.2209-2217
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• 2006

Dynamic flow characteristics of a counter-flow vortex tube is investigated using hot-wire and piezoelectric transducer (PZT) measurements. The experimental study is conducted over a range of cold air outlet ratios (Y=0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0) and inlet pressure 0.15 MPa. Temperatures are measured at the cold air outlet and along the vortex tube wall. Hot-wire is located at cold outlet and PZT is installed at inner vortex tube by mounting at throttle valve. The cold outlet temperature results show that the swirl flow of vortex tube is not axisymmetric. The hot-wire and PZT results show that there exist two distinct kinds of frequency, low frequency periodic fluctuations and high frequency periodic fluctuations. It is found that the low frequency fluctuation is consistent with the Helmholtz frequency and the high frequency fluctuation is strongly related with precession oscillation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.33-34
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• 2006

In this study, a prototype piezo-driven Injector. as a new method driven by piezoelectric energy, has been designed and fabricated based on the concept of inverse piezo-electric effect to overcome the major drawbacks of conventional solenoid-driven injector with a fixed and slow control of injection rate. The effects of an electric control between the solenoid valve and piezo-ceramic stack for injector needle's driving on the dynamic characteristics were usually investigated. We found that this piezo-electric actuator has the main advantage to drastically reducing the time of injector nozzle opening, as well to exert higher force output levels.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.195-202
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• 2004

This paper presents the fabrication and evaluation of mechanical behavior for a peristaltic micropump by flow simulation. The valve-less micropump using the diffuser/nozzle is consists of the lower plate, the middle plate, the upper plate and the tube that connects inlet and outlet of the pump. The lower plate includes the channel and the chamber, and the plain middle plate are made of glass and actuated by the piezoelectric translator. Channels and a chamber on the lower plate are fabricated on high processability silicon wafer by the DRIE(Deep Reactive Ion Etching) process. The upper plate does the roll of a pump cover and has inlet/outlet/electric holes. Three plates are laminated by the aligner and bonded by the anodic bonding process. Flow simulation is performed using error-reduced finite volume method (FVM). As results of the flow simulation and experiments, the single chamber pump has severe flow problems, such as a backflow and large fluctuation of a flow rate. It is proved that the double-chamber micropump proposed in this paper can reduce the drawback of the single-chamber one.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.49-56
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• 2018

In this paper, the performance analysis and the experiment of the brake system using the small piezoelectric-hydraulic pump were performed. Initially, the 3-D modeling of the brake load components was performed for the construction of the brake system. Subsequently, modeling using the commercial program AMESim was performed. A floating caliper model was used as a load for modeling the brake system. Through the AMESim simulation, load pressure, check valve displacement and flow rate under no load state were calculated, and performance analysis and changes in dynamic characteristics were confirmed by adding brake load. A jig for use in fixing the brake load during performance test was manufactured. The flow rate was assessed under no load condition and load pressure formation experiments were performed and compared with simulation results. Experimental results revealed the maximum load pressure as about 73bar at 130Hz and the maximum flow rate as about 203cc/min at 145Hz, which satisfied the requirement of small- and medium-sized UAV braking system. In addition, simulation results revealed that the load pressure and discharge flow rate were within 6% and 5%, respectively. Apparently, the modeling is expected to be effective for brake performance analysis.

• International Journal of Automotive Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.323-332
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• 2005

A cylindrical constant volume combustion chamber was used to investigate the flow characteristics at the spark electrode gap and the combustion characteristics of a homogeneous charged methane-air mixture under various overall charge pressures, excess air ratios and ignition times. The flow characteristics, including the mean velocity and turbulence intensity, were analyzed with a hot wire anemometer. Combustion pressure development measured by piezoelectric pressure transducer, a flame propagation image acquired by ICCD camera and exhaust emissions measured by 2-valve gas chromatography were used to investigate effects of initial pressures, excess air ratios and ignition times on the combustion characteristics. It was found that the mean velocity and turbulence intensity had the maximum value around 200-300 ms and then decreased gradually to a near-zero value after 3000 ms and that the combustion duration was shorten and the flame speed and laminar burning velocity had the highest value under the condition of an excess air ratio of 1.1, an overall charge pressure of 0.15 MPa and an ignition time of 300 ms in the present study. The $CO_2$ concentration was proportional to the ignition time and overall charge pressure, the $CO_2$ concentration was proportional to the excess air ratio, and the UHC concentration was inversely proportional to the ignition time and overall charge pressure.