Compact valve inducing self-excited vibration and its applications

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a new valve that performs the intake and exhaust of a closed flow path by self-excited vibration instead of using electricity. Recently, fluid powered robots are developed actively, because they can be operated near human safely and they are also easy for environment because they don’t produce hazardous wastes. In addition, fluid powered robots have less risk than electric powered robots to cause fire when they are operated in the gas, because fluid powered robots are less likely to be ignitions. But they still have the risk to cause fire in such a place, because electromagnetic valves are often used in fluid powered robots. So in this paper, I propose the valve which performs without electricity, and show the results of several performance experiments. After that, I propose ways to use the valve as a new actuator, for example, a mobile robot and a musical instrument.