Characteristics Variation Analysis by Shape of Piezoelectric Ultrasonic Transducer with Non Uniform Thickness

The electro-mechanical characteristics were theoretically analyzed for the wideband ultrasonic transducer made of non-uniform thickness piezoelectric vibrator. This paper proposes a combination of exponential functions which describes the thickness variation along the length of the vibrator to derive the input admittance and power transfer function of the transducer. The bandwidth and the power transfer function of the transducer were investigated while the lateral shape of the vibrator changes. The results showed there is an optimum shape for the wideband characteristics of the transducer, and the bandwidth has increased up to over 100% as the ratio of minimum value of thickness to maximum value decreases. However, the power transfer function had a downward trend as the ratio of thickness decreases. Also we confirmed that even though the value of transfer function increases as the length of the piezoelectric vibrator increases, the shape providing wideband characteristics is very limited. It means that precision processing is required to manufacturing a wideband ultrasonic transducer with high efficiency.