抄録
This paper investigated characteristics of the micro bubble valve utilizing a surface tension effect to demonstrate a capability of a flow rate control in a micro channel. The micro valve is operated with controlled surface boundaries of the bubbles generated from two micro channels for air flow at the intersection of the main channel. These controlled boundaries can choke the flow in the main channel so that the valve can control the flow rate. In this study, the characteristics of two types of the micro valve which have a different scale of the air inlet channel width to generate the boundary surface was studied with an observation of the surface boundary shape and with a measurement of the controlled flow rate using a weight method under some flow rate conditions of the main channel managed with a height of the head tank. And the velocity distributions around the bubble surface boundary were measured with a micro Particle Image Velocity. As a result, it proved that the characteristics of the flow rate control effect with the micro valve depend on the blockage ratio and the stretching ratio of the surface boundaries of the bubbles. In the blockage ratio 98%, this micro valve is able to control the 40% flow rate with the wide width type of the air inlet channels.
