AN ANALYTICAL EVALUATION OF THE HEATING OF LOW-FREQUENCY SONAR PROJECTORS

Heating has become a critical issue for low-frequency projectors for s onar and oceanography due to their high dissipated power density and l ong excitation time. An analysis of the transducer heating requires a description of the heat conduction in the structure and of the heat ex changes with the surrounding medium. To solve this problem for the ste ady-state case, an analytical model of the heat transfer in the projec tor, based on thermoelectrical analogies, is proposed. The model is ap plied to the analysis of heat transfer in two geometries of low-freque ncy projectors: a double-ended longitudinal vibrator and a class IV fl extensional transducer. In each case, temperature and heat fluxes are calculated and compared to numerical results from a finite element ana lysis.