Metal Cap Flexural Transducers for Air-Coupled Ultrasonics

Ultrasonic generation and detection in fluids is inefficient due to the large difference in acoustic impedance between the piezoelectric element and the propagation medium, leading to large internal reflections and energy loss. One way of addressing the problem is to use a flexural transducer, which uses the bending modes in a thin plate or membrane. As the plate bends, it displaces the medium in front of it, hence producing sound waves. A piezoelectric flexural transducer can generate large amplitude displacements in fluid media for relatively low excitation voltages. Commercially available flexural transducers for air applications operate at 40 kHz, but there exists ultrasound applications that require significantly higher frequencies, e.g. flow measurements. Relatively little work has been done to date to understand the underlying physics of the flexural transducer, and hence how to design it to have specific properties suitable for particular applications. This paper investigates the potential of the flexural transducer and its operating principles. Two types of actuation methods are considerd: piezoelectric and electrodynamic. The piezoelectrically actuated transducer is more energy efficient and intrinsically safe, but the electrodynamic transducer has the advantage of being less sensitive to high temperature environments. The theory of vibrating plates is used to predict transducer frequency in addition to front face amplitude, which shows good correlation with experimental results.