Piezoelectric Pump Utilizing Innovative Non-Mechanical Active Valves

The objective of this program is to develop and make ready for commercial production a novel pump design utilizing piezoelectric pumping elements combined with fast acting non mechanical active valves and a miniature digital controller. The piezoelectricactuator is an available building block that has a proven track record, surviving 3x109 cycles in diesel fuel injectors. Available conventional valve technology has thus far prevented full exploitation of the piezoelectric actuator's capabilities for usein pumps. A fast acting valve is needed. Functionality of the novel valve proposed here as well as a prototype of the compact pump, have already been demonstrated in Phase I of this program. The combination of piezoelectric actuator and non-mechanicalvalves has the potential to result in the first high frequency and thus high power density and intrinsically reliable piezoelectric pump with no wear components. It is proposed under Phase II of this program to develop and fabricate a pump suitable forcommercial sale, and develop analytical tools to enable optimization of pump design parameters to easy adjustment of the design to meet a wide range of applications. It is anticipated that the result of this Phase II effort will be a compact hydraulic pumpthat has higher specific power density than any currently available that can meet the requirements for many aerospace as well as general industrial requirements. It is planned to develop this technology to a commercial product and then take advantage ofthe inherently low cost of the raw materials used to fabricate piezoelectric stacks to enable penetration into mass production markets. The demonstration of reduced size, weight and cost while attaining better reliability enables successful competitionwith existing pump technology.