Vasundara V. Varadan
Vijay K. Varadan
Res. Ctr. for the Eng. of Electron. and Acoust. Mater., Dept. of Eng. Sci. and Mech., Penn State Univ., University Park, PA 16802
Piezoelectric transducers are commonly used to measure the response in a structure to impressed acoustic fields and other forces. By definition, an ideal sensor must be nonintrusive and its output must be a close representation of the response of the structure at that location. Thus the design of the sensor---its shape and size, material properties relative to the structure, its location in the structure---all contribute to sensitivity and fidelity. In addition, material damping in the plate and the transducer must be taken into account. The sensor response involves computation of the voltage induced in the transducer by an incident acoustic wave in the fluid or a force to which the plate may be subjected to. A hybrid numerical method involving finite element modeling in the structure and transducer region and a plane wave representation in the fluid region will be used. Canonical structures such as plates will be considered for which the structural response can be obtained in the absence of the sensor for purposes of comparison. A parametric study will be presented.