Determination of Material Properties Components used in FEM Modeling of Ultrasonic Piezoelectric Transducer

Ultrasonic transducers have found new applications such as ultrasonic assisted micromachining, micro forming, surface treatment, welding, etc. Apart from the transducer’s shape and size, the resonant frequencies and amplitude are seriously affected by materials properties used for transducer components. A further problem with the material is that their properties may vary from batch to batch and may also depend on the size of the raw stock. In this work using modal analysis, the material properties are calculated based on the frequency response method, which is more accurate than the nominal one. The finite element modelling was employed for both 2D and 3D FEM analysis to observe the behaviour of the cylindrical test rods and two sandwich-type piezoelectric transducers with the nominal frequency of 20 kHz and 30 kHz to find the validity of these properties. The obtained results showed that the modal analysis method could accurately determine the bar speed, Poisson's ratio and elastic modulus of the ultrasonic transducer components. The accuracy of this method increases by considering more vibration mode. Based on the results, obtained errors for FEM modelling of two ultrasonic transducers with the frequency of 20 kHz and 30 kHz are 0.15% and 0.33%, respectively.