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、国防和渔业等领域都有应用。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，以询问和获取海洋环境的知识。在过去的100年里，超声波换能器材料和结构的创新为许多性能改进奠定了基础。材料方面的例子包括：20世纪50年代的压电陶瓷；20世纪90年代的压电复合材料；压电晶体从2000年；长期致力于无铅压电材料；和快速的当代研究和发展的纹理陶瓷。然而，创新的潜力通常被视为与现有换能器的既定使用存在紧张关系，部分原因是此类设备的使用寿命长，因此通常需要数十年才能实现潜力。该博士项目由泰利斯英国公司赞助，适合工程师、物理学家或材料科学家，将研究如何将这种创新表征、理解和编纂，其特定目标是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纹理陶瓷结合到代表性换能器中来实现这一目标。这将在一系列软件平台上利用新的材料表征技术和虚拟原型，实现有限元分析和更简单的工具。研究结果将在技术上和所制定的程序方面进行记录，包括与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.