Hydroacoustic Evaluation of 1-3 Piezocomposite Plate and Ring Structures

摘要

Piezoelectric composites with a 1-3 connectivity pattern have been investigatedfor potential underwater sonar transducer applications. Recently, with increasing interest in the development of intelligent systems and adaptive structures, emphasis on using 1-3 piezocomposites in actuator applications has become more noticeable. This class of composite materials consists of aligned thin ceramic rods imbedded in a polymeric resin. The high content of a polymeric phase offers the advantage of providing large area coverage for the fabrication of flexible and/or conformal actuator arrays. These materials exhibit excellent piezoelectric d properties so that they deliver adequate displacement under moderate electric drives. These good properties can be obtained at fairly low ceramic volume fractions, hence the 1-3 piezocomposites provide an additional benefit of a good acoustic impedance match to water. In addition, compared with the conventional actuators of the magnetostrictive or piezoceramic type, the 1-3 piezocomposite structures can be fabricated for array designs of much reduced profile and low standoff. In this paper, we discuss some recent results on the evaluations of 1-3 piezocomposite plate and ring structures both in air and in water. (MM).