Counter-faced ultrasonic phased array system for non-contact flow manipulation

Abstract

This paper presents the non-contact droplet manipulation using counter-faced ultrasonic phased arrays. Acoustic levitation is promising method for containerless processing. Since microgravity environment can minimize an acoustic energy for a droplet levitation and containerless processing, we have developed the non-contact droplet manipulation system and the automatic injection system of droplet for the microgravity experiments. Prior to microgravity experiments on the ISS (International Space Station), we conducted the reduced gravity experiments by parabolic flight in order to verify the developed systems.