MEASUREMENT OF AIR FLOW VELOCITIES IN MICROSIZED IONIC WIND PUMPS USING PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY

摘要

The knowledge of the flow fields inside of microsized ionic wind pumps has become more important as the need for smaller and more efficient heat removal devices has increased. Understanding these flow fields will help optimize the ionic wind pump performance. Non-intrusive microscale particle image veldcemity (PIV) utilizing a microscopic objective lens is used to obtain the flow field inside of the ionic wind pump. Atomized olive oil droplets are used as seed particles with air as the flow medium. Voltages ranging from 1700 to 2000 V are used, as well as seeded flow rates of 1.5 and 2.0 L/min. Computational models, developed using COMSOL Multiphysics, are used to qualitatively verify the flow fields. The effects of voltage and seed flow rate are also compared. The computational and PIV flow fields are shown to be very similar. It is shown that as the voltage applied to the ionic wind pump increases the maximum velocity inside of the ionic wind pump, ranging from 1.71 m/s to 3.19 m/s. The average mass flow rate inside of the device also increases as the voltage is increased, ranging from .0009 g/s to .0019 g/s. It is also shown that the seed flow rate has little effect on the PIV flow field obtained.