title: Broadband cluster transducer for underwater acoustics applications.
abstract: A broadband cluster transducer, based on barrel-stave flextensional transducer technology, was designed, built, and tested in air and seawater at Defence R&D Canada-Atlantic. The design goal was to develop a transducer that exhibited a transmitting voltage response of greater than 120 dB1 microPa-m/V from 1 to 7 kHz and have the potential for beamsteering. Six orthogonal piezoceramic-driven class I barrel-stave transducer elements mounted on a central manifold were wired separately, allowing each to be driven individually or in combination with the other elements. The resonance modes under the following drive conditions were determined from in-air conductance measurements: each of the six elements excited individually as mass-loaded class I flextensionals, three collinear pairs driven separately as class III flextensionals, and all six elements driven in phase simultaneously. The fully-driven cluster was found to have a transmitting voltage response of greater than 120 dB1 microPa-m/V from 800 Hz to more than 10 kHz and its topology is amenable to beamsteering that is yet to be characterized.
authors.affiliation: Defence Research and Development Canada-Atlantic, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia B2Y 3Z7, Canada. richard.fleming@drdc-rddc.gc.ca
authors.forename: Richard A G
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Fleming
authors.forename: Dennis F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Charles G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Reithmeier
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D000388:Air; D003146:Communications Media; D004553:Electric Conductivity; D004867:Equipment Design; D008889:Military Personnel; D012623:Seawater; D014159:Transducers