Research On Sub-electrode Spherical Transducer

Spherical transducer is widely used in underwater acoustic, due to simple mechanicalstructure, low cost, easy installation, good consistency, easily into array, and so on. For thereason that it occupies an important position in study of underwater acoustic transducer.Moreover, if the transducer has directivity, it helpful to improve the signal-to-noise ratio,increase the transmission distance, reduce the consumption. Therefore, in this paper, asub-electrode spherical transducer in the basis of traditional spherical transducer wasdesigned, in order to realize directivity emission sound.The main content of this paper is using the method of divided electrode, using differentincentives, and using multiple modal coupled to realize the directional emission of sphericaltransducer. First, theory of spherical transducer had been introduced, as well as how to realizedirectional emission of the transducer. Secondly, simulation analysis of spherical transducerhad been developed by means of finite element analysis software ANSYS, and how thestructure parameters of the spherical transducer affect its characteristics had been studied. Adirectional sub-electrode spherical transducer had been designed based on the result ofsimulation.Finally, a prototype transducer with diameter40mm, thickness2mm, had beenfabricated. The characteristics of the prototype, such as impedance, transmitting voltageresponse and directivity had been measured. The measurement results show that its maximumtransmitting voltage response is152.3dB, operation bandwidth from35kHz to60kHz. Evenoperated in different modes, the transmitting voltage response curve of this transducer is flat.The results show that the sub-electrode spherical transducer can radiate sound by directional.