Electrohydrodynamic pumping effect in dielectric liquid using a non-uniform traveling field

The electrohydrodynamic pumping force for dielectric liquid is effected by a traveling wave type non-uniform electric field formed by a spiral winding electrode immersed in the liquid. In the apparatus, an acrylic U type pipe electrode with three spiral winding wires covered with dielectric is installed inside a vinyl U type circular tube. A three phase alternating high voltage with low frequency is directly applied to the three wires. The vinyl pipe is filled with dielectric liquid (kerosene) through liquid tank. The liquid head displacement caused by the traveling wave is measured as the differences between the steady state liquid level. By the three phase voltage, an electric field of the traveling electric wave is built up inside the tube. This displacement shows strong dependence on the peak exciting voltage and frequency. Theoretically, this fluid pressure rise can be solved by Navier-Stokes equation. In this paper, a solution was obtained from Navier-Stokes equation under some assumptions which have acceptable physical meanings. From the fact that the theoretical results give qualitative agreement with the experimental results, parameter dependence of the EHD pumping effect became clear experimentally and theoretically