Opening Plenary paper – Roy Sharpe Prize Lecture: Piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers: from design through to application
Professor A Gachagan
Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, University of Strathclyde, UK
Over the past 30 years, I have been involved in the design of ultrasonic piezoelectric transducers across a range of applications, primarily in NDE but also encompassing condition monitoring, process control, biomedical and high power uses. The core technology has been active piezocomposite material configurations, but the transducer considerations have also included passive polymer materials, array element layouts and transducer housings. This presentation will provide an overview of the key transducer design drivers and demonstrate transducer designs developed for non-contact, immersion, dry-contact and gel-coupled operation. In addition to the conventional piezocomposite design approaches, more novel active materials using piezoelectric fibres and fractal design will be introduced. This NDE journey starts with air-coupled inspection and includes 2D array configurations, conformable devices and wheel probes for wood characterisation and in-process (weld and additive manufacture) inspection. In addition to transducer considerations, the implementation of signal processing techniques to maximise the ultrasonic system performance will also be discussed. Finally, design and application of transducers for other sectors will be described including particle/bubble sizing in process control and a biomedical 1D phased ultrasonic array for intravascular sonoporation.
