Oscillatory Incompressible Fluid Flow in a Tapered Tube With a Free Surface in an Inkjet Print Head

Abstract

Oscillatory incompressible fluid flow with a free surface occurs in an inkjet print head. Due to complex physical fluid behavior, numerical simulations have been a common approach to characterize the pressure and velocity development in time and space. However, the cost of a numerical approach is high in terms of computational time such that approximate analytic approaches have been developed. In this paper, an approximate analytic solution for a tapered nozzle section is described with a proper downstream boundary condition and the physical behavior of the meniscus deformation is modeled with a simple “window” theory.