Curved PVDF airborne transducer

In the application of airborne ultrasonic ranging measurement, a partially cylindrical (curved) PVDF transducer can effectively couple ultrasound into the air and generate strong sound pressure. Because of its geometrical features, the ultrasound beam angles of a curved PVDF transducer can be unsymmetrical (i.e., broad horizontally and narrow vertically). This feature is desired in some applications. In this work, a curved PVDF air transducer is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Two resonances were observed in this transducer. They are length extensional mode and flexural bending mode. Surface vibration profiles of these two modes were measured by a laser vibrometer. It was found from the experiment that the surface vibration was not uniform along the curvature direction for both vibration modes. Theoretical calculations based on a model developed in this work confirmed the experimental results. Two displacement peaks were found in the piezoelectric active direction of PVDF film for the length extensional mode; three peaks were found for the flexural bending mode. The observed peak positions were in good agreement with the calculation results. Transient surface displacement measurements revealed that vibration peaks were in phase for the length extensional mode and out of phase for the flexural bending mode. Therefore, the length extensional mode can generate a stronger ultrasound wave than the flexural bending mode. The resonance frequencies and vibration amplitudes of the two modes strongly depend on the structure parameters as well as the material properties. For the transducer design, the theoretical model developed in this work can be used to optimize the ultrasound performance.