Modelling of a microfluidic device with piezoelectric actuators

This paper presents the modelling of a given microfluidic device, that is applied as a drop-on-demand printhead for different printing tasks. Piezoelectric bend mode actuators are used to eject a droplet from the respective nozzle on demand. The device is considered as a coupled system consisting of an electric, a mechanical and a fluidic part. The electric and mechanical parts of the piezoelectric actuator are described by conventional lumped elements, while the complex three-dimensional fluid analysis is performed by a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) free-surface modelling package. The model helps one to understand the fluid dynamics and thus to study different design and operating parameter aspects. The general approach to the problem of modelling a microfluidic device as presented here can also be applied in various other modelling tasks.