Research on Effects of Dust Removal Using Ultrasonic Vibrators

This work presents two types of ultrasonic vibrators in order to comparatively analyze their dust removal properties for microscopic particles. The vibrators were constructed by pasting four piezoceramic (PZT) plates onto the upper surface of a rectangular metal substrate. The longitudinal or bending mode is excited to form a standing wave in the vibrators. The superposition of the longitudinal and bending modes generates a traveling wave. Because the bending and longitudinal vibrations are two different modes, the process of tuning their resonant frequencies to be close is necessary for the traveling wave vibrator. The structural parameters of the vibrators were optimized by the finite element method. During experiments, the dust removal performances of these vibrators were evaluated by dumping cigarette ash or alumina powders randomly on the surface of the prototype vibrators. The measured experimental results indicate that the dust removal performance of the traveling wave oscillator is better than that of the standing wave oscillator. The two operating modes of the traveling wave vibrator produce orthogonal vibration displacements on the vibrator driving points. Vibration in one direction generates friction force, which drives adherent dust particles. Vibration in the other direction provides intermittent contact pressure between the vibrators and deposited dust particles. The synthesized elliptical motion of vibrator particles helps to improve the dust removal characteristics of the vibrators. The simple structure of the developed vibrators makes them the most promising candidates for dust removal from engines, camera lenses, car windows, and navigation systems.