NEW DESIGN OF MATCHING LAYERS FOR HIGH-POWER AND WIDE-BAND ULTRASONICTRANSDUCERS

Application fields of ultrasonic transducers can be divided into two c ategories, a high resolution required field and a high power required field. This paper's aim is to determine optimal properties of the matc hing layers of the transducer for each of the applications. Furthermor e, its goal is to optimize the properties of the matching layers that show satisfactory performance for both of the application fields. Thro ugh the direct time domain analysis of the transmission and reflection behavior of the ultrasonic wave, apart from the conventional equivale nt circuit analysis, and Fourier transformation of its results, we fin d the optimum acoustic impedance of the matching layers. The newly det ermined layers provide much better transducer performance-up to 57% mo re-than those obtained with conventional design methods. For the optim ization, we have developed a new transducer performance evaluation par ameter that can be applied to any type of ultrasonic transducers. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.