Research on bimetallic plate piezoelectric ceramic pillar array transducer

Abstract

Underwater acoustic communication often demands broadband and high-sensitivity performance. As a communication interface, traditional transducers normally use composite materials, but they have many shortcomings. In this paper, a bimetallic plate piezoelectric ceramic pillar array transducer is developed by using air stuffing instead of flexible materials, and metal plates are added to expand the bandwidth while taking into account the increase of sensitivity. As the performance of the transducer depends on the sensitive component, the equivalent circuit method is used to analyze the frequency of the sensitive component, and ANSYS finite element simulation software is used to determine the optimal parameters of the sensitive component. The sensitive component fabricated according to the optimal parameters is made into a bimetallic plate piezoelectric ceramic pillar array transducer by a new process. The transducer experimental testing results indicate that the bandwidth of the bimetallic plate piezoelectric ceramic pillar array transducer can reach 30 kHz, the maximum emission sound source level is 201.9 dB, and the receiving sensitivity is −181.6 dB, which can effectively improve the sensitivity and have wider bandwidth.