Abstract
1-3 type, 1-3-2 type and 2-1-3 type piezoelectric composites are three proper smart materials for the design and manufacture of ultrasonic transducers. They have been proposed in different stages but possess similar properties. Compared with the initial 1-3 type composite, 1-3-2 composite is of higher mechanical stability. Compared with 1-3-2 composite, 2-1-3 composite has lower manufacturing difficulty. In this paper, a comparative study on these three composites in terms of receiving transducer material properties is presented. Finite element method (FEM) has been adopted to calculate longitudinal velocity, thickness electromechanical coupling coefficient and voltage receiving sensitivity. It is concluded that for a large aspect ratio $\alpha=1$, the performance of 2-1-3 composite transducer is much better than that of 1-3 and 1-3-2 composite transducers. The thickness electromechanical coupling coefficient of 2-1-3 composite transducer is about 5.58 times that of 1-3 composite transducer and 7.42 times that of 1-3-2 composite transducer. The voltage receiving sensitivity at 2 kHz of 2-1-3 composite transducer is 13.1 dB higher than that of 1-3-2 composite transducer and 12.3 dB higher than that of 1-3 composite transducer.
Highlights
In the field of ultrasonic transducers, 1-3 piezoelectric composite has been widely used as a kind of smart material instead of piezoelectric ceramics because of its better flexibility, lower acoustic impedance and higher piezoelectricity [1,2,3,4,5]
In 1-3 piezoelectric composite, piezoelectric rods are perpendicularly embedded in a viscoelastic matrix and the two phases are mechanically connected in parallel
Since the piezoelectric phase is connected in one direction and the matrix phase is connected in three directions, the composite is called 1-3 type according to the naming rule
Summary
In the field of ultrasonic transducers, 1-3 piezoelectric composite has been widely used as a kind of smart material instead of piezoelectric ceramics because of its better flexibility, lower acoustic impedance and higher piezoelectricity [1,2,3,4,5]. Wang et al [6,7,8,9] have estimated the effective properties of 1-3-2 composite based on linear piezoelectric theory and uniform field theory They determined the influence of piezoelectric phase volume fraction and composite aspect (thickness/width) on the resonance characteristic by finite element method. They manufactured 1-3-2 composite samples to measure the parameters, such as hydrostatic pressure stability, temperature stability, voltage response and receiving voltage sensitivity. Performance comparison of 2-1-3, 1-3 and 1-3-2 piezoelectric composite transducers nodes on the surface of the composite unit cell are restrained in order to be the same This leads to equal vertical strains of both piezoelectric phase and matrix phase, which is definitely not in accord with the fact of coarse-scaled composite.
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