FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON THE THICKNESS RESONANCE OF PIEZOCOMPOSITE TRANSDUCERS

Finite element method (FEA) has been used to calculate the thickness r esonance frequency and electromechanical coupling coefficient k(t) for 2-2 piezocomposite transducers. The results are compared with that of the effective medium theory and also verified by experiments. It is s hown that the predicted resonance frequencies from the effective mediu m theory and the unit cell modeling using FEA deviate from the experim ental observations for composite systems with a ceramic aspect ratio ( width/length) more than 0.4. For such systems, full size FEA modeling is required which can provide accurate predictions of the resonance fr equency and thickness coupling constant k(t). (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.