Modeling and calculation of acoustic radiation for a free-flooded ring transducer array

The acoustic radiation characteristics of a free-flooded ring transducer array are modeled and calculated. At first, the characteristics such as admittance, resonant frequency and transmitting voltage response of the free-flooded ring transducer and a three-element coaxial array are calculated by the finite element method using the commercial software ANSYS. The surface vibration displacement distribution of the transducer and array are obtained. The results are imported into SYSNOISE software. Then, the acoustic radiation characteristics of the transducer and array are calculated by the boundary element method The calculation results show that the transmitting voltage response of the three-element free-flooded ring transducer array with spacing about half wavelength is 7.7dB higher than that of the single transducer at the frequency 1900Hz. The vertical directivity of the three-element array is sharper than that of the single transducer. The 3dB beam width of the three-element array is 30.6^o, and that of the single transducer is 63.6°. The former is 33° narrower than the latter. The proposed technique can be used to predict the performance of a transmitting transducer array at the stage of preliminary design.