A switching method for traveling/standing wave transportation modes in two-dimensional acoustic fields using a dual-transducer support structure

Guanyu Mu; Huijuan Dong; Tong Sun; Kenneth T V Grattan; Zhiguang Wu; Jie Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.ultsonch.2023.106724

A switching method for traveling/standing wave transportation modes in two-dimensional acoustic fields using a dual-transducer support structure

Ultrason Sonochem. 2023 Dec:101:106724. doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2023.106724. Epub 2023 Dec 9.

Authors

Guanyu Mu¹, Huijuan Dong², Tong Sun³, Kenneth T V Grattan⁴, Zhiguang Wu¹, Jie Zhao⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China. Electronic address: dhj@hit.edu.cn.
³ School of Science & Technology, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China; School of Science & Technology, City, University of London, London EC1V 0HB, United Kingdom.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China. Electronic address: jzhao@hit.edu.cn.

Abstract

The dual-transducer support structure discussed has the advantages of a simple structure and low cost, as well as allowing for the use of both Traveling-Wave (TW) and Standing-Wave (SW) acoustic transportation, supporting its use in pharmaceutical and biochemical analysis, for example. By adjusting the distance between the vibrating plate and the reflector which forms SW field in the y direction, the control of the position of the SW nodes or the TW component along the x direction allows the formation of a Two-Dimensional Standing Wave (2D-SW) or a Traveling Wave (TW) acoustic field, and these could be used for transportation in the x direction. It has been found that the x position of the SW nodes can be adjusted through changing the temporal phase shift, θ, which permits multiple objects to be transported using the 2D-SW mode. By comparison, TWs in the opposite direction could be generated at a pair of specific temporal phase shifts, allowing fast transportation using the TW mode. In this research work, an experiment has been carried out to transport polystyrene spheres using the two modes by programming the temporal phase shift, θ, this illustrating that precise position control of the multiple objects transported was possible using the 2D-SW mode, while high-speed transportation (up to 540 mm/s) was realized using the TW mode, showing that the dual-transducer support structure could be used effectively for accurate and fast transportation. As a fully non-contact method, the dual-transducer support structure can be seen to work in the 2D-SW mode for reaction synthesis or detection applications, and also in TW mode for rapid sample transportation applications.

Keywords: Dual-transducer support structure; Non-contact transportation; Temporal phase shift; Two-dimensional standing wave; Two-dimensional traveling wave.