Effect of Temperature and Pressure on the Thickness Mode Resonant Spectra of Piezoelectric Ceramic

Abstract

Piezoelectric Lead ZirconateTitanate (PZT) ceramics based acoustic transducers are widely used in a multitude of applications as sensors and actuators. Different modeling techniques are used by transducer designers to test the original designs without building costly prototypes. The equivalent circuit of piezoelectric vibrator represented by Van Dykemodel is used to plot the resonant curve. Based on the application, piezoelectric materials in the acoustic transducers are subjected to a variety of environmental conditions. This results in the shift in the resonant frequency. This paper reports the effect of change in temperature and pressure on the thickness mode response of equivalent circuit of piezoelectric Lead ZirconateTitanate (PZT) ceramic. The ranges considered are suitable for under water applications. With varying conditions of temperature and pressure, the changes in resonant and anti-resonant frequencies of the piezoelectric material are noted. Using these practically obtained values, parameters of the model are computed and the shift in the resonance curve is observed for the conditions considered. The values of resonant and anti-resonant frequencies obtained from the model response match with those obtained experimentally for the given conditions. Other material constants required for building realistic Finite Element Analysis models can be computed using these practically obtained values of resonant and anti-resonant frequencies.