Abstract

A Wide Variety of Possibilities for Thermofluid Control by MEMS

Recent advances in micro actuators for thermofluid control are reviewed. The important contributions are discussed in terms of micropumps or microvalves, micromixers, micro thermofluid machines, boundary-layer control using micro perturbations. The author stresses that, in this field, remarkable progresses have been made and there are many challenging works which lead to new possibilities for the thermofluid dynamics.

Brief Bio

Hideo Yoshida received the B.E. (1978), M.E. (1980), and D.E. (1983) degrees in mechanical engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyoto University since March 1999.

His major current interests include energy utilization based on distributed generation as well as micro actuators in the fields of thermofluid engineering. Concerning the former, emphasis is laid on microturbine systems; he has proposed a hybrid bearing with water evaporation from ultra-fine porous medium. On the other hand, for the latter, he studies a micropump system driven by Marangoni effect, the fundamental characteristics of which were published at IHTC 12 in 2002.