Flow Characterization of a Piezo-Electric High Speed Valve

Injecting a gas into fusion reactors or semiconductor manufacturing systems, one has to quickly control the flow rate by a piezoelectric valve. In order to construct a gas injection system with high speed valves in the future, performance tests have been conducted on a commercial piezoelectric valve. An orifice flowmeter for measuring time average flowrate and a hot wire anemometer for instantaneous flowrate were manufactured. The total flow coefficient of the orifice flowmeter was obtained experimentally under a low pressure of a 10-2 Pa and a low flowrate of a few mg/s, although they are smaller than the values specified by Japanese Industrial Standards. It is found that the hot wire anemometer installed downstream in the vicinity of the valve is suitable for detecting the change in flowrate with the response time of less than 1 ms.