VOF法による円管流路の先端と平板間の液架橋力の解析

抄録

Recently, demand for micromanipulation has been increasing in various fields, such as MEMS, integrated electronic devices, and bio-cell applications. Capillary force is one of the feasible methods for manipulating heterogeneous and complex micro parts. Liquids are flexibly deformed its shape and adapt any surface; we can pick up complex shaped micro objects softly. If we use a drop of pure water for generating capillary force, we can realize contamination less clean manipulation because pure water disappears by evaporation.

We have developed a capillary force gripper driven by a piston pump. Although we have designed this gripper to generate a liquid bridge between the end of glass pipette and picking-up objects, the theoretical validation of capillary force for this condition has not been conducted thus far. In this paper, we report the theoretical validation of the capillary force between the end of circular pipe and a plane surface by CFD analysis with the VOF method.