Low Cost Crystal Transducer Elements for the Next Generation Counter Measure

For this Phase I SBIR program, TRS Technologies and Ultra Electronics Ocean Systems (UEOS) will develop tangentially poled single crystal ring transducers for the Next Generation Countermeasure (NGCM), a compact, submarine-launched, smart countermeasure designed to decoy acoustic homing torpedoes. The improved material properties of single crystal enable the design of a small but capable transducer providing significant savings in size, weight and power that will enable the insertion of key technologies/capabilities for the NGCM. To date, crystal transducers for the NGCM have been constructed from segmented rings which are labor intensive and expensive to fabricate. TRS and UEOS will develop tangentially poled ring transducers to greatly simplify the construction and lower the cost of NGCM broadband transducers. The rings will be specially designed through choice of proper aspect ratio and electrode placement to have uniform properties around their circumference. Simplified transducer fabrication will result in a 2.5X lower cost compared to segmented rings with no reduction in performance. During the Phase I program the ring transducers will be characterized for in-water acoustic source level, bandwidth, and beam pattern. In Phase II TRS will optimize and scale-up transducer fabrication and UEOS will integrate the transducers into the NGCM electro-acoustic module.