The first use of the shear actuation mechanism for valve-less piezoelectric micro-pumps design

The present contribution has the aim to present a new valve-less piezoelectric micropump design that uses the so-called shear-actuation mechanism (SAM). In contrary to the classical extension actuation mechanism, here the initial poling and actuation electric field directions have to be perpendicular. This new design exploits the recently proposed shear bimorph concept that benefits from the sever al advantages of the SAM, in particular the low and homogeneous stresses both in side and at the actuators interfaces. Several designs, through variations of the electric signal, actuators stiffness, electrodes number and boundary conditions, are proposed and evaluated using finite element analyses in order to assess their performance according to the generated maximum displacement and cavity volume.