Computational study of a novel valveless design of a macroscale piston pump

Abstract

This paper deals with a novel valveless piston pump, which is using modified Venturi diodes as a replacement for common check valves. The pump characteristic was obtained from CFD simulations in ANSYS Fluent software. The simulations were carried out on a simplified 2D geometry model of the pump. The dependencies of the volumetric efficiency of the pump on parameters of piston motion (frequency and amplitude) and backpressure are the results of the simulations. The principle of the pump is based on different rates of dissipation in the discharge and the suction diode. The paper also presents a qualitative analysis of dissipation function for turbulent flow, which provides further insight into the principle of valveless pumping.