Integrating Materials Innovation into Ultrasonic Transducers for Underwater Sonar

水下声纳是水下使用的最重要的成像技术，在海洋测量、海洋监测、航运导航以及国防和渔业等领域得到了应用。绝大多数声纳系统依靠由压电材料制成的换能器来产生和探测超声波信号，以询问和了解海洋环境。在过去的100年里，超声换能器材料和结构的创新支撑了许多性能的改进。材料方面的例子包括：20世纪50年代的压电陶瓷；90年代的压电复合材料；2000年以来的压电晶体；无铅压电材料的长期努力；以及织构陶瓷的快速当代研究和开发。然而，创新的潜力经常被视为与现有传感器的现有使用之间的紧张关系，部分原因是这种设备的长寿命，因此这种潜力通常需要几十年的时间才能实现。这个由英国泰利斯公司发起的博士项目将适合工程师、物理学家或材料科学家，研究如何对这种创新进行表征、理解和编纂，特别是为了缩短实现创新材料和结构潜力的时间。它将通过积极探索将无铅压电和织构陶瓷结合到有代表性的传感器中来实现这一点。这将在一系列软件平台上利用新的材料表征技术和虚拟样机，实现有限元分析和更简单的工具。结果将在技术上和所制定的程序方面记录下来，包括与具有不同技能水平的声纳换能器设计者的互动。

Underwater sonar is the most important imaging technique for use underwater, finding applications in marine surveying, ocean monitoring, shipping navigation, and the defence and fishing industries, amongst others. The vast majority of sonar systems rely on transducers made with piezoelectric materials to generate and detect ultrasound signals to interrogate and gain knowledge of the marine environment. Innovation in ultrasonic transducer materials and structures has underpinned many of the performance improvements that have been achieved in the past 100 years.Examples in materials include: piezoceramics in the 1950s; piezocomposites in the 1990s; piezocrystals from 2000; a long-running effort in lead-free piezoelectrics; and rapid contemporary research and development in textured ceramics. However, the potential for innovation is often seen as in tension with established use of existing transducers, partly because of the long lifetime of such devices, and it therefore usually takes decades for the potential to be realised.Sponsored by Thales UK, this PhD project, which will suit an engineer, physicist or material scientist, will study how such innovation can be characterised, understood and codified, with a particular aim to shorten the time to realise the potential of innovative materials and structures. It will do this through active exploration of incorporation of lead-free piezoelectrics and textured ceramics into representative transducers. This will exploit new material characterisation techniques and virtual prototyping across a range of software platforms implementing finite element analysis and simpler tools. The results will be documented technically and with regard to the procedures developed, including interaction with sonar transducer designers with different skill levels.