Piezoelectric Single Crystal Property Assessment for Cost-Effective Optimized Naval SONAR Transducers

Piezoelectric single crystal material offers significant advantages for Naval SONAR transducer such as reduced size, increased efficiency, greater sensitivity, and larger bandwidth. Adoption of these newer materials, however, is limited due to the lack of detailed knowledge of performance characteristics, particularly under varying pressure, temperature and electric field, limiting engineer capability for design or inclusion within new systems. Through use of a versatile experimental method for gathering electrical impedance profiles under those varying conditions, combined with the finite element modeling package PZFlex and optimized inverse methods, the material properties of the crystal can be determined. Additionally, the method can determine crystal flaws and deviations from standard crystal structures and include this. The outcome of the project will be both a complete hardware/software system for nonlinear characterization of single crystal material, as well as fully characterized samples from domestic vendors.