Computational and Experimental Study to Evaluate the Resonance Condition of the Standing Wave Acoustic Levitation System

Acoustic levitation is a technique for non-contact processing and hence very useful in different areas like chemical reactions of highly reactive substances. Resonance is the key reason for the Standing wave acoustic levitation system and depends on the right distance between the driver and the reflector surfaces. In this paper, the finite difference method is used to calculate the distance between the driver and reflector surfaces for resonance phenomenon. Two different computational domains-1D and 2D geometry of the levitation system are considered for the study. The finite difference results are supplemented by 2D axisymmetric Finite Element simulation (implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics) to find the resonance condition. To validate the numerical results, an experimental setup is prepared and eighth resonance mode is considered. The distance between the driver surface and the reflector surface is calculated for eighth resonance mode from finite difference method, COMSOL Multiphysics and experimental method. It is found that the numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental result. Thus, even the 1D and 2D finite difference code can accurately predict the distance requirement for acoustic levitation system.