Fabrication and Evaluation of Particle Excitation Flow Control Valve using Flexural Vibration Mode

This paper reports the particle excitation flow control valve using flexural vibration mode. The authors have been developing a compact, light-weight air flow control valve, which can control air flow continuously. This valve controls airflow using particle excitation caused by piezoelectric vibration and the vibration acceleration determines the flow characteristics. In order to reduce the vibration acceleration required for flow control of this control valve mechanism, we proposed a driving principle that uses torsional vibration as a vibration perpendicular to air pressure. However, in the method, the orifice did not open completely, so the controllable flow rate remained low. Therefore, to expand the control flow, we propose a control valve that uses flexural vibration, which is orthogonal to air pressure. In this paper, we present a prototype vibrator that generates flexural vibration mode, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed valve control method through experimentation.