Design and Fabrication of a Stacked Three-Phase Piezoelectric Composites Ring Array Underwater Ultrasound Transducer

A stacked three-phase piezoelectric composites ring array underwater ultrasound transducer was developed in this paper. The circular structure of three-phase piezoelectric composite with a large open angle was improved based on the 1-3 piezoelectric composites. The structure size of the transducer’s sensitive component was designed by using ANSYS simulation software, and the single-ring samples of three-phase piezoelectric composites with different thicknesses were fabricated. Based on the bandwidth broadening theory of multimode coupled vibration, the piezoelectric composite ring-shaped sensitive component was fabricated by the piezoelectric composite curved-surface-forming process. According to the design structure of the transducer, the stacked three-phase piezoelectric composites ring array underwater ultrasound transducer was processed. The experimental results show that the maximum transmission voltage response is 154 dB, the open angle of the horizontal beam reaches 360°, and the bandwidth of −3 dB is 86 kHz. The developed transducers achieved a high frequency, broadband, and large open angle to radiate sound waves.