Abstract

A simple oscillatory, slightly compressible, fluid flow model in a thick-walled piezoelectric tube used in a drop-on-demand inkjet print head is developed from the point of view of fluid-structure interaction to take account of pressure wave propagation and pressure loading opposing wall motion. A frequency sweep is performed computationally using the model revealing the first acoustic fluid-structure resonance frequency and the influence of fluid viscosity. The validity of the model, with given information on the speed of sound in a fluid, is evaluated by comparing the theoretically predicted resonance frequency to the experimentally measured resonance frequency. In addition, the intrinsic speed of sound can be easily computed using the measured acoustic resonance frequency and this computed speed of sound agrees closely with speeds of sound reported in the literature. (C) 2003 Acoustical Society of America.