• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.33-39
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• 2020

Typically, photoacoustic images are obtained in water or gelatin because the impedance of these mediums is similar to that of the human body. However, these acoustic mediums can have an additional mass effect that changes the resonance frequency of the transducer. The acoustic radiation impedance in air is negligible because it is very small compared to that of the transducer. However, the high acoustic impedance of mediums such as the human body and water is quite large compared to that of air, making it difficult to ignore. Specifically, in a case where the equivalent mass is very small, such as with a micro-machined ultrasound transducer, the additional mass effects of the acoustic medium should be considered for an accurate resonance frequency design. In this study, a piezoelectric micro-machined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) was designed to have a resonance frequency of 10 MHz in the acoustic medium of water, which has similar impedance as the human body. At that time, the resonance frequency of the pMUT in air was calculated at 15.2 MHz. When measuring the center displacement of the manufactured pMUT using a laser vibrometer, the resonance frequencies were measured as 14.3-15.1 MHz, which is consistent with the finite element method (FEM) simulation results. Finally, photoacoustic images of human hair samples were successfully obtained using the fabricated pMUT.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.282-287
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• 2010

This paper gives a description of an experimental study of the ultrasonic welding of metals. In ultrasonic metal welding, high frequency vibrations are combined with pressure to join two materials together quickly and securely, without producing significant amount of heat. Ultrasonic metal welder consists of Transducer, Booster, and horn that are designed very accurately to get the natural frequencies and vibration mode. In this study, The horn was designed and analyzed the natural frequency by the modal analysis and harmonic analysis. And using a fiber optic sensor, we measured the amplitude and analyzed the Fast Fourier Transformed result. Using the horn, Ultrasonic metal welding between Cu sheet and Cu sheet of 0.1mm thickness was accomplished under the optimal conditions of static pressure 0.15MPa, vibration amplitude 30% and welding time of 0.28s. This result can be used for ultrasonic metal welding in manufacturing industry.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.80-85
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• 2012

The ultrasonic cutting method is which cutting by applying high frequency vibrational energy into specific area at constant pressure. Ultrasonic cutting is consisted of power supply, transducer, booster and cutting tool. Precise designing is required since each part's shape, length and mass can affect driving frequency and vibration mode. This paper focused to cutting tool design, its length L was set by calculating vibration equation. And the value of the shape parameter a was diversified as the integral multiple and the result of 40,189Hz the analysis of Modal was shown in the length 30mm of the result of performance b in the 11th mode Also by performing harmonic response analysis, the frequency response result was 40,189Hz, which was similar to modal analysis result.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.112-119
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• 2015

Photoacoustic microscopy is capable of providing high-resolution molecular images, and its spatial resolution is typically determined by ultrasonic transducers used to receive the photoacoustic signals. Therefore, ultrasonic transducers for photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) should have a high operating frequency, broad bandwidth, and high signal-reception efficiency. Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) is a suitable material. To take full advantage of this material, the selection of the backing material is crucial, as it influences the center frequency and bandwidth of the transducer. Therefore, we experimentally determined the most suitable backing material among EPO-TEK 301, E-Solder 3022, and RTV. For this, three PVDF high-frequency single-element transducers were fabricated with each backing material. The center frequency and -6 dB bandwidth of each transducer were ascertained by a pulse-echo test. The spatial resolution of each transducer was examined using wire-target images. The experimental results indicated that EPO-TEK 301 is the most suitable backing material for a PAM transducer. This material provides the highest signal magnitude and a reasonable bandwidth because a large portion of the energy propagates toward the front medium, and the PVDF resonates in the half-wave mode.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.23-30
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• 1997

Recently high frequency ultrasonic transducers to employ polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) or polyvinylidene fluoride trifluoroethylene P(VDF-TrFE) have been used to detect small flaws in immersion testing. The detection field depending on the water path between the transducer and a specimen and the path in a tested specimen was measured using a PVDF transducer with nominal frequency 80MHz. Also, C-scan and B-scan were performed for the specimens made of Cr-Ni steel with the artificial flaws, the flat-bottom holes with diameter ranging from $50{\mu}m$ to $560{\mu}m$ at 12mm depth. As the result, the flaws with diameter larger than $280{\mu}m$ were detected, but the flaws with the ratio of diameter to wavelength smaller than about 0.48 were not detected. That the smaller flaws could not be detected was attributed to the attenuation of high frequency components in the steel specimens.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.518-524
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• 2004

The feasibility of Y(z) curve method of scanning acoustic microscope using high frequency transducer was experimentally studied for assessment of the thermal degradation in Co-based superalloy. Thermal degradation was performed to simulate the microstructural changes in Co-based superalloy arising from long term exposure at high temperature. Longitudinal wave velocity measured by pulse echo method using 10MHz transducer and leaky surface acoustic wave (LSAW) velocity measured by V(z) curve method using 200MHE transducer were measured to investigate the effect on thermal degradation. Ultrasonic velocity decreased as the aging time increased in both ultrasonic waves. Moreover, the low frequency longitudinal wave velocity decreased a little. Otherwise, the high frequency LSAW velocity drastically decreased up to a maximum of 4.7% at the aging time of 4,000hours. A good correlation was found between LSAW and Vickers hardness. Consequently, V(z) curve method of SAM using high frequency transducer could be a potential tool for assessing thermal degradation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.1-39
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• 1981

A doppler log is the typical device which can measure the ship's speed over the ground directly, by means of doppler effect of the underwater ultrasonic wave, which involves the error due to the sea bottom inclination, the trim and the incorrect transducer installation etc. The present doppler log adopts a single transducer, faced in the direction of themain beam, and therefore it is unable to correct the beam direction to eliminate the above mentioned error. Moreover, the frequencyis also limitted in a comparatively high range for getting a sharp beam with single transducer, and the speed over the ground can not be detectable at the deep sea, for an instance, over 200 meters. This paper describes a theoretical consideration for the doppler log error and an analysis by a computer on the observed speed data by a full size model ship. The result is verified that the most of doppler log error is caused by the ultrasonic beam angle of transducer. To eliminate the doppler log error due to the incorrect transducer installation and also to sharpen the beam for lower frequency range to expand measurable sea depth, this paper proposes a method of controlling the directivity adopting a linear transducer array and of controlling the directivity by the control of exciting current, and investigates by the computer simulation and make experiment with magnetostrictive ferrite transducer of 28, 50 and 75KHz. The experimental results are shown well coincide with the measured ones, and they are revealed that in case where the transducer interval is greater than 1 wavelength, the effective control of the beam direction is hardly performed with keeping adequate beam width and side lobe level. It is concluded that 6-elements array with inter element space of a half wavelength can make comparatively sharp beam and low side lobe level. The results obtained here will contribute very much to the improvement of the performance of doppler log.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06e
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• pp.742-747
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• 2001

A study on the ultrasonic effect for turbulence enhancement is carried out in the horizontal flow field of a coaxial circular pipe. A large transparent acryl tank is made to perform several experiments for the above research. The front flow field from jet exit is divided as 4 measuring regions to observe characteristics of the above flow field according to those with and without ultrasonic. An ultrasonic transducer with 2MHz high frequency is used to give them the ultrasonic forcing. Characteristics such as the velocity distribution, the kinetic energy and the turbulence intensity are visualized, observed, examined and considered at Re No. 2000. In results, it is clarified that the ultrasonic increases the turbulence enhancement. And the optimum and harmonious intensity suited to the power of flow is needed to maximize the turbulence enhancement.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.481-493
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• 2018

Ultrasonic guided waves have attracted increasing attention for non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridge cables. They offer advantages like single measurement, wide coverage of acoustical field, and long-range propagation capability. To design defect detection systems, it is essential to understand how guided waves propagate in cables and how to select the optimal excitation frequency and mode. However, certain cable characteristics such as multiple wires, anchorage, and polyethylene (PE) sheath increase the complexity in analyzing the guided wave propagation. In this study, guided wave modes for multi-wire bridge cables are identified by using a semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) technique to obtain relevant dispersion curves. Numerical results indicated that the number of guided wave modes increases, the length of the flat region with a low frequency of L(0,1) mode becomes shorter, and the cutoff frequency for high order longitudinal wave modes becomes lower, as the number of steel wires in a cable increases. These findings were used in design of transducers for defect detection and selection of the optimal wave mode and frequency for subsequent experiments. A magnetostrictive transducer system was used to excite and detect the guided waves. The applicability of the proposed approach for detecting and locating wire breakages was demonstrated for a cable with 37 wires. The present ultrasonic guided wave method has been found to be very responsive to the number of brokenwires and is thus capable of detecting defects with varying sizes.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.319-330
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• 2022

In this study, the optimal driving frequency was derived through finite element analysis (FEA) to optimize the developed piezoelectric ultrasonic medical devices(PUMD) for bone surgery. The core of the PUMD is the piezoelectric ceramic (PZT), which is a vibrator that generates vibration energy. The piezoelectric ceramic shows the maximum current value with respect to the input voltage at the resonance frequency, which generates the maximum mechanical vibration. In the past, various studies have been conducted related to the analysis of PUMD, but most of the research so far has been limited to free vibration analysis. However, in order to derive the accurate resonant frequency, the initial stress generated by bolt tightening in the bolt-clamped Langevin type transducer (BLT) must be considered. In this study, after designing a PUMD, the driving performance according to the bolt tightening value was analyzed through FEA, and this was experimentally verified. First, the resonance mode and frequency response were confirmed through modal and harmonic analysis at 20-40 kHz, which is known as the optimal driving frequency band of PUMD for bone surgery. In addition, the design of the PUMD was confirmed by checking the mechanical behavior of the tip and the piezoelectric ceramic at the resonant frequency. Consequentially, the characteristic evaluation was performed, and it was confirmed that the resonant frequency result derived through the FEA was reasonable. Through this study, we presented a more rational FEA method than before for BLT transducers. We expect that this will shorten the time and cost of developing a PUMD, and will enable the development of more stable and high-quality products.