Simulation of ultrasonic cleaning and ways to improve the efficiency

Abstract

Based on practical problem in industrial ultrasonic cleaning, this research has an objective to simulate acoustic pressure leading to cavitation in a cleaning tank. By using Harmonic response in ANSYS as simulation software, acoustic pressure distribution has been simulated at different position in the cleaning tank. The result has been confirmed by aluminum foil corrosion test. The simulations show that increasing power of piezoelectric transducers can lead to increasing the power of acoustic pressure; however, it cannot lead to the change of acoustic pressure distribution. To change the acoustic pressure distribution, the difference of frequencies is required. For such typical ultrasonic cleaning tank, the position of the highest cleaning efficiency is at the middle of the tank. Finally, the result can lead to the optimization between the power and frequency of ultrasonic to reach the maximum cleaning efficiency.