Modeling Pressure-Driven Inkjets

Xerox uses FLOW-3D to design
pressure-driven inkjets. This animation
shows the formation of ink drops from
a pressure-driven inkjet nozzle.
Courtesy of Xerox.

A popular means of generating ink jets for digital printing is to use a programmed pressure at the base of an ink-jet nozzle device. Because of the almost unlimited combinations of driving pressure, shape of the nozzle, surface tension and viscosity of the ink and other variables, it is extremely useful to have a way to simulate ejected droplets under various combinations of these parameters. FLOW-3D can be used for this purpose because of its capabilities for modeling nearly all the physical processes that govern the formation of ink jets.

Shown on the left is an example of the formation of a droplet from a simple pressure-driven nozzle, where the upstream pressure history has been specified.

Read more in our Microfluidic Tech Papers