Experimental investigation of the acousto-ultrasonic transfer characteristics of adhesively bonded piezoceramic transducers

Martin Veidt, Tierang Liu, Sritawat Kitipornchai
2000 Smart materials and structures (Print)  
For the development of optimised health monitoring systems and smart materials, the understanding of the interaction of piezoelectric transmitting and receiving transducers with the structure is essential. This paper reports on the development of an experimental technique to determine the acousto-ultrasonic transfer characteristics of adhesively bonded piezoceramic transducers. Five millimeter diameter piezoceramic discs with and without brass backing were glued to one and two millimeter thick
more » ... luminium plates. Narrow and broad band excitation pulses were applied to the transducers in a frequency range between 50 kHz and 1 MHz, a frequency regime suitable for guided wave ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation applications. The electro-mechanical transfer properties of the ultrasonic transmitter elements were determined using a heterodyne Doppler laser vibrometer as a noncontact receiver device and Rayleigh-Lamb wave theory to describe the propagation behaviour of the waves in the structure. It is found that the transfer characteristics are extremely complex including sharp and narrow as well as broader but less pronounced frequency regimes of high energy transfer. It is shown that the major features of the transfer functions for different experimental configurations are similar, but the magnitudes of the peaks and their locations in frequency space are different for individual transducer/substrate combinations. Veidt/Liu/Kitipornchai, Experimental Investigation of the Acousto-Ultrasonic ... 3 revised manuscript (Log #00471) submitted to SMS, Sept. 1999 revised manuscript (Log #00471) submitted to SMS, Sept. 1999 519-533 Duke J C (Ed.) 1988 Acousto-Ultrasonics: Theory and Application (New York: Plenum Press) Komsky I N and Achenbach J D 1993 Application of self-calibrating ultrasonic technique to the detection of fatigue cracks by the use of Lamb waves Review of Progress in QNDE D O Thompson and D E Chimenti (Eds) Vol 12 (New York: Plenum Press) pp 2167-2174 Liu T, Kitipornchai S and Liew K M 1998 Analysis of acousto-ultrasonic input-output characteristics for transmitting and receiving contact-type transducer coupled to a Timoshenko beam AIAA Journal 36 644-653 Liu T, Karunasena W, Kitipornchai S and Veidt M 1999 The influence of backward-wave transmission on quantitative ultrasonic evaluation using Lamb wave propagation The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America accepted for publication Rose J L 1995 Recent advances in guided wave NDE IEEE Ultrasonic Symposium 761-770 Rose J L, Ditri J J and Pilarski A 1994 Wave mechanics in acousto-ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation Journal of Acoustic Emission 12 23-26 Sayir M B 1993 Wave propagation in non-isotropic structures IUTAM 1992 S R Bodner et al (Eds) (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science) pp 371-394
doi:10.1088/0964-1726/9/1/303 fatcat:mjxyfjdx4nfjzo6tafiko3hzbm