Materials and Device Modeling to Reduce Cost and Time to Exploit Relaxor Piezoelectric Single Crystals in Navy SONAR Transducers

The discovery in 1996 of a group of relaxor-based ferroelectric single crystals with electromechanical properties superior to those of traditional PZT has generated considerable interest in for defense sonar. Recently, it has become evident that greater experience and improvements in materials processing has begun to yield a greater supply of reliable and consistent materials appropriate for designing and building practical devices. However, there still remains a significant gap in experience applying these materials to practical devices. Closing this gap requires significant expansion of the knowledgebase of available properties including the reliability, behavior over time and range of operating conditions. Materials Systems Inc. has excellent capabilities and more experience in the application of novel transducer materials to Navy sonar systems than any other small company. In the proposed program, MSI will work closely with Weidlinger Associates, Inc. and material vendors to begin addressing piezoelectric single crystal application issues through a series of characterization, design and validation studies. This will include detailed characterization of selected materials for input into Finite Element Analysis models, validation of these properties with measurements of material samples and design-build-test of a practical Navy device.