Volume 135, Issue 1, January 2014
Index of content:
- TRANSDUCTION 
Performance of tonpilz transducers with segmented piezoelectric stacks using materials with high electromechanical coupling coefficient135(2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4837217View Description Hide Description
Tonpilz acoustic transducers for use underwater often include a stack of piezoelectric material pieces polarized along the length of the stack and having alternating polarity. The pieces are interspersed with electrodes, bonded together, and electrically connected in parallel. The stack is normally much shorter than a quarter wavelength at the fundamental resonance frequency so that the mechanical behavior of the transducer is not affected by the segmentation. When the transducer bandwidth is less than a half octave, as has conventionally been the case, for example, with lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material, stack segmentation has no significant effect on the mechanical behavior of the device in its normal operating band near the fundamental resonance. However, when a high coupling coefficient material such as lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) is used to achieve a wider bandwidth with the tonpilz, the performance difference between a segmented stack and a similar piezoelectric section with electrodes only at the two ends can be significant. This paper investigates the effects of stack segmentation on the performance of wideband underwater tonpilz acoustic transducers. Included is a discussion of a particular tonpilz transducer design using single crystal piezoelectric material with high coupling coefficient compared with a similar design using more traditional PZT ceramics.
135(2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4836075View Description Hide Description
A multimodal method based on the admittance matrix is used to analyze wave propagation through scatterers of arbitrary shape. Two cases are considered: a waveguide containing scatterers, and the scattering of a plane wave at oblique incidence to an infinite periodic row of scatterers. In both cases, the problem reduces to a system of two sets of first-order differential equations for the modal components of the wavefield, similar to the system obtained in the rigorous coupled wave analysis. The system can be solved numerically using the admittance matrix, which leads to a stable numerical method, the basic properties of which are discussed (convergence, reciprocity, energy conservation). Alternatively, the admittance matrix can be used to get analytical results in the weak scattering approximation. This is done using the plane wave approximation, leading to a generalized version of the Webster equation and using a perturbative method to analyze the Wood anomalies and Fano resonances.