Solid Freeform Fabrication of Novel Piezoelectric Ceramics and Composites for Transducer Applications

摘要

Novel piezoelectric ceramic and ceramic/polymercomposite structures were fabricated by solid freeform fabrication(SFF) for transducer applications. SFF techniques including fuseddeposition of ceramics (FDC) and Sanders prototyping (SP) wereutilized to fabricate a variety of complex structures directly from acomputer aided design (CAN) file. Novel composite structuresincluding volume fraction gradients (VFG) and staggered rods, aswell as actuator designs such as tubes, spirals and telescopes weremade using the flexibility provided by the above processes. VFGcomposites were designed to suppress the intensity of side lobes inthe acoustic beam pattern of a transducer. Several innovativedesigns were realized for the strain amplification in piezoelectricactuators using the FDC technique. The design, fabrication andelectromechanical properties of these composites and actuators arediscussed in this paper.