The design of a wideband and widebeam piston transducer in a finite closed circular baffle

Abstract

The design of a high power piezoelectric underwater transducer operating at frequency range 42 kHz-78 kHz with acoustic power capability in excess of 250W is described. The transducer consists of two back-to-back elements. Each element is formed by stacked PZT-4 ceramic rings, a matching and a steel backing layer, and placed in a finite rigid circular baffle. We investigate the dependence of bandwidth and beamwidth to the combination of piston and baffle radii, a and b, respectively. With ka of 2.45 (k is the wave number) at resonance and a b/a ratio of 2, the transducer resonates at 60kHz with 60% bandwidth and has a beamwidth of 60º at each half space. We show that when two transducers are placed at right angles spatially and driven in parallel, we can obtain an omnidirectional beam pattern in the lower frequency band. The beam pattern exhibits two dips in each quadrant at the higher end of the frequency band, which are within 8 dB. We also investigate power handling capability of the transducer from thermal point of view using finite element analysis. The input impedance measurements agree well with the numerical results within the pass band.