Ternary Single Crystal Tonpilz Transducers with Reduced Side Lobes for Wide Angle Beam Steering

The goal of this Phase I program is to develop broadband single crystal sonars with reduced sidelobes to increase bandwidth for Naval sonar systems. Single crystal piezoelectric is a high energy density, highly efficient piezoelectric material that is being used to develop acoustic and ultrasonic transducers with bandwidths much higher than has been possible with conventional ceramic materials. For sonar, broad bandwidth is especially important for operations in littoral waters where sensitivity to a wide frequency range is important for sorting out signals of interest in a noisy and acoustically cluttered environment. In fact, it has been shown for many sonar applications that single crystals can provide broadband response (bandwidth >100%) and increased acoustic power in a much smaller transducer size that requires less electrical power. This makes single crystal sonar ideal for compact space and power constrained platforms such as towed minehunters, UUV's USV's, countermeasures, ACOMMS buoys, and torpedoes. TRS and Penn State ARL will develop and qualify single crystal transducer arrays for the Navy platform. Broad bandwidth will enable the realization of expanded mission goals. TRS and ARL will then optimize the design of single crystal transducers and conduct standard single element transducer tests to verify performance.