Customized Vibrating-Membrane Nozzles for Enhanced Fluid Atomization

Beck-Broichsitter, Moritz; Schmehl, Thomas; Seeger, Werner

doi:10.1080/02786826.2015.1008623

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 41 publications

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“…The holes were in the shape of a cone with a bottom diameter (reservoir side) of ~ 60 µm and top diameter (dispersing side) of ~ 10 µm. The generated droplets were expected to be in the similar micrometer scale, [15][16][17][18] and these droplets were reported to evaporate almost immediately as compared to the actuation time. 19,20 The atomizer, which was capable of atomizing ~ 11 mg/s in an open system, was then installed inside of a hollow cuboid chamber.…”

Section: Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid Soft Material Actuation Through Droplet Evaporation

2021

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Soft material actuation is a promising field that can potentially solve several limitations of traditional robotic systems. These systems are composed of soft and flexible materials to achieve high degrees-of-freedom and compliance with its surroundings. One method to actuate such structures is to vaporize liquid that is embedded inside the soft material. The soft elastomers are inflated, since the generated vapor occupies a much larger volume after phase transformation. The simplest and widely used design to vaporize such liquids is by installing a heating element near the liquid. Heating the system beyond the boiling point rapidly boils the liquid and deforms the structure. However, this technique possesses several limitations, where the heating element must be in the liquid's vicinity, and boiling the liquid requires high temperatures. In addition, embedding a small amount of liquid for faster boiling prevents the use of valves to exhaust the vapor. Instead, the structure is slowly cooled until it returns to its original position. In this study, these limitations are addressed by combining heating with vibrating mesh atomization. The atomizer disperses the liquid into small droplets, which vaporize much faster as compared to simply heating the bulk liquid. Actuation through vibrating mesh atomization was first characterized and compared with other techniques. Then, the introduced method was used to demonstrate cyclic actuation, and a bistable structure was designed and fabricated to demonstrate gripping motion.

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