Peristaltic Pump

Application ID: 985


In this example of a peristaltic pump, rollers squeeze a flexible tube and the compression drives a fluid through the tube. The model demonstrates how to use the Fluid-Structure Interaction interface.

The main advantage of the peristaltic pump is that no seals, valves or other internal parts ever touch the fluid. Due to their cleanliness, peristaltic pumps have found many applications in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biomedical and food industries.

This COMSOL Multiphysics model of a peristaltic pump is a combination of structural mechanics (to model the squeezing of the tube) and fluid dynamics (to compute the fluid’s motion); that is, this is an example of fluid-structure interaction (FSI).

This model also shows some analysis features. Integration coupling variables are defined for the flow computations and for evaluating the inside volume of the tube. An ordinary differential equation is also used for calculating the accumulated flow.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: