The meniscus oscillation of ink flow dynamics in thermal inkjet print head

Meniscus oscillation usually occurs after jetting drops in Drop-on-Demand inkjet head. It is important for ink refill motion. Ink refill motion affects many jetting performance in inkjet technology. Therefore it is very important to understand ink refill motion process for designing inkjet head dimensions and ink properties, such as nozzle diameter, barrier thickness, ink viscosity and surface tension. This meniscus oscillation is a kind of under-damped oscillation. The refill time is defined, as the time required returning to the initialization, the free surface obeys damped oscillation and oscillates between meniscus mounding and recession when the amplitude of the oscillation reduces to dispersion. This study researches several inkjet heads using computational fluid dynamics simulation. CFD solver, such as FLOW_3D, is used to solve the problem After calculation, the results are plotted with post-processor such as plot software and output to printers, This paper shows the break-off time, the refill time and operation frequency of the injet head.