Tonpilz piezoelectric transducer with a bending piezoelectric disk on the radiation surface

In recent years, it has become necessary to use wide-band signals in various kinds of signal processing and communication technology fields. One of these is the field of underwater acoustic technology, and therefore wide-band transducers are needed in this field. To address this need, we developed a Tonpilz piezoelectric transducer with a bending piezoelectric disk on the radiation surface of the front mass. This transducer was designed by providing a bending piezoelectric disk on the radiation surface of the front mass of a conventional Tonpilz piezoelectric transducer to enable it to generate in two resonance modes: the longitudinal vibration resonance mode and the bending vibration resonance mode of the bending disk. Coupling these two resonance modes makes it possible to achieve low-frequency transmission, and wide-band signals can be attained by adjusting the phase in the two modes. We obtained the optimum design dimensions of the transducer through analysis using the finite element method (FEM), and constructed a prototype based on the analysis. Experiments verified that the measured results for the prototype correspond well to the simulation results and that the bandwidth can be widened without changing the external size of the conventional transducer.