Performance Study of a Fluidic Hammer Controlled by an Output-Fed Bistable Fluidic Oscillator

Using a no-moving-component output-fed bistable fluidic oscillator to control fluid flows into a parallel path has been recognized for a considerable time, but as yet it is not so widely adopted as its obvious benefits would deserve. This may be attributed to the encountered problems associated with its jet behavior, complicated by its loading characteristics. In order to investigate a typical case for the application of the output-fed fluidic oscillator, this paper elaborates on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation method for studying the performance of a fluidic hammer controlled by an output-fed bistable fluidic oscillator. Given that couple mechanism exists between the flow field in the fluidic oscillator and the impact body, dynamic mesh technique and a user-defined function written in C programming language were used to update the mesh in the simulations. In terms of the evaluation of performance, the focus is on the single-impact energy and output power of the fluidic hammer in this study, to investigate the effect of different parameters of the impact body on them. Experimental tests based on the noncontact measuring method were conducted to verify the simulation results, by which the accuracy and reliability of this CFD simulation method was proved.