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Island attack and defense, emergency rescue, scientific research, civilian fisheries and other fields are inseparable from timely, high-quality underwater communications. However light and other electromagnetic waves are severely attenuated in water, acoustic is currently the only energy carrier that can transmit signals over long distances in water. However, the complex water environment and serious interference bring serious challenges to underwater activities using underwater acoustic sensors-hydroacoustic transducers. Thus, this paper aims to develop a class of high reception sensitivity hydroacoustic transducer structures to provide research and utilization ideas for related scholars.

The electromechanical coupling coefficient is improved by converting the thickness vibration mode of the piezoelectric ceramic into the longitudinal vibration mode of the piezoelectric pillars array, and no polymer is added between the piezoelectric pillars array to reduce lateral coupling as well as internal friction, which can thus reduce the energy losses. Radial stacking in parallel can also enhance the charge generated through the positive piezoelectric effect. The optimal parameters of the structure are determined by equivalent circuit method and finite element analysis, and a hydroacoustic transducer of this structure is fabricated finally.

According to the standard test procedure, the hydroacoustic transducer was tested in water. The tests show that the conductance curve of the stacked high-sensitivity hydroacoustic transducer tested in the air is in good agreement with the simulation results. The resonant frequency is about 118 kHz, and the receiver sensitivity is −166 dB. The stacked material hydroacoustic transducer is in the high-frequency range and has a much higher sensitivity (−166 dB) than many types of hydroacoustic transducers fabricated by piezoelectric ceramic (less than −200 dB).

Although the stacked high-sensitivity hydroacoustic transducer that the authors have fabricated has a performance improvement, it has a limitation. The hollow design of the pillar arrays increases the reception stress on each pillar, and the imposed pressure comes from water also increases simultaneously, so the depth of water that the stacked high-sensitivity hydroacoustic transducer can operate in may be slightly shallower than that made of a pure piezoelectric ceramic block or a piezoelectric ceramic material with polymer added. This will be a problem to be solved in a future deployment.

Whether it is marine scientific research or in various fields such as civil recreation and fishing, hydroacoustic communication and necessary underwater exploration are indispensable for acoustic waves. The hydroacoustic transducer is the sensor that sends and receives sound waves, so a lot of water equipment, such as yachts, sonar buoys, and so on, cannot be separated from the hydroacoustic transducer. In addition, the complexity of the water environment also requires a good performance of the hydroacoustic transducer to facilitate the convenience and effectiveness of subsequent signal processing. Therefore, hydroacoustic transducers have great market and commercial value.

Hydroacoustic transducers are not only of great commercial value but also have a significant impact on the military as well as on people’s livelihood. As we all know, in the area of submarine communication and underwater exploration, sonar is the main force. The performance of the hydroacoustic transducer directly affects the performance of the hydroacoustic signal processing system, and ultimately directly determines the success or failure of the mission. In addition, the large-scale replacement of hydroacoustic transducers on equipment requires the concerted efforts of a large number of practitioners, such as material scientists, structural scientists, mathematicians and so on. Therefore, the rise of hydroacoustic transducers has given rise to a large number of learning positions as well as employment positions.

To enhance the reception sensitivity of the hydroacoustic transducer, the authors have optimized the existing hydroacoustic transducer materials and structures to propose a stacked sensitive element, which can effectively enhance the electromechanical conversion coefficient of the piezoelectric material. Furthermore, the authors have manufactured a hydroacoustic transducer using the proposed stacked sensitive element. The test results of the hydroacoustic transducer also show that the designed stacked sensitive element is of great help to enhance the reception sensitivity of the hydroacoustic transducer.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective and novel methodology to determine optimal location of piezoelectric transducers for passive vibration control of geometrically complicated structures and shells with various curvatures. An industry‐standard aircraft leading‐edge structure is considered for the actuator placement analysis and experimental verification.

The proposed method is based on finite element analysis of the underlying structure having a thin layer of piezoelectric elements covering the entire inner surface with pertinent boundary conditions. All the piezoelectric properties are incorporated into the elements. Specifically, modal piezoelectric analysis is performed to provide computed tomography for the evaluations of the electric potential distributions on these piezoelectric elements attributed by the first bending and torsional modes of structural vibration. Then, the outstanding zone(s) yielding highest amount of electric potentials can be identified as the target location for the best actuator placement.

Six piezoelectric vibration absorbers are determined to be placed alongside both of the fixed edges. An experimental verification of the aluminum leading edge's vibration suppression using the proposed method is conducted exploiting two resistive shunt circuits for the passive damping. A good agreement is obtained between the analytical and experimental results. In particular, vibration suppression around 30 and 25 per cent and Q‐factor reduction up to 15 and 10 per cent are obtained in the designated bending and torsional modes, respectively. In addition, some amount of damping improvement is observed at higher modes of vibration as well.

The frequency in the proposed approach will be increased slowly and gradually from 0 to 500 Hz. When the frequency matches the natural frequency of the structure, owing to the resonant condition the plate will vibrate heavily. The vibrations of the plate can be observed by connecting a sensor to an oscilloscope. Owing to the use of only one sensor, not all the modes can be detected. Only the first few modes can be picked up by the sensor, because of its location.

This method can also be used in optimizing not only the location but also the size and shape of the passive vibration absorber to attain maximum amount of damping. This can be achieved by simply changing the dimensions and shape of the piezoelectric vibration absorber in the finite element model on an iterative basis to find the configuration that gives maximum electric potential.

The determination of optimal location(s) for piezoelectric transducers is very complicated and difficult if the geometry of structures is curved or irregular. Therefore, it has never been reported in the literature. Here an efficient FEA‐based electric potential tomography method is proposed to identify the optimized locations for the PZT transducers for passive vibration control of geometrically complicated structures, with minimal efforts. In addition, this method will facilitate the determination of electric potentials that would be obtained at all the possible locations for piezoelectric transducers and hence makes it possible to optimize the placement and configurations of the candidate transducers on complex shape structures.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss phenomena in publishing that usually escape recognition. The aim of the research is to address exclusionary practices surrounding digital objects, including those in open access journals.

The subject scope focuses on digital objects and how their contexts come to matter in open‐ended processes of “metadating”. The new concept of a digital object in context (doic) marks the difference between an author's file and the metadata work undertaken on it. The theoretical scope of the paper is feminist technoscience. An analogy to piezoelectric transducer technology in ultrasonography (Barad) is transferred to the context at hand. Barad's concept of “apparatus” is employed to shed new light on publishing.

The paper finds that contextual metadata should be given due attention. Metadata may show exclusionary practices that need reconsideration.

Technology is closely intertwined with technoscientific issues and user perspectives. Yet, user perspectives are not all there is to publishing. Future research might address if exclusionary practices in publishing differ from one scientific community to another.

The analytical distinction between a file and its metadata serves to get a digital object on the track to better visibility. The provisional checklist helps reconsider current practices in publishing.

The paper infuses the open access debate with current technoscientific research and introduces Karan Barad's concept of “apparatus” to a wider audience. To research authors this paper gives crucial information for the placement decisions of their upcoming articles. For readers and innovative publishing initiatives the checklist is helpful for reflecting one's own practices. For anyone concerned with research publishing, including commercial enterprises as well as library and information scientists, the new concept of a doic generates ideas when linked to research communication as being first and foremost an economy based on gift giving for recognition.

The pulse‐echo method used for the measurement of distances is based on the determination of the fly‐time, employed by the wave (a pulse or a short train) to travel from the sensor to the object and back. It is easy to measure with accuracy the precise moment of the emission, but determining the precise moment of the arrival of the echo is somewhat more complex.

EARLY in 1963, a project was initiated in co‐operation with an European airline with a purpose of starting development work for a new transducer for engine vibration monitoring. The low reliability of former pickups motivated this development work. In the course of the development, modern engine design requirements raised the need for the high temperature stability of these transducers. The development work was, therefore, based on the necessity to produce a vibration transducer with extreme high reliability, good interchangeability tolerance and useable up to approximately 600 deg. C. in practical flight operation. With regard to these requirements, a suitable technical approach seemed to be the use of the piezoelectric transducer technique, because seismic acceleration pickups working on the piezoelectric principle do not use moving parts, whereas displacement and velocity pickups, used so far, have at least one moving part, i.e. the inertial mass. Also the requirement for high temperature stability could be met by using modern crystal technology. The following chapters will expound some mechanical and crystallographic considerations in connection with such transducers, and furthermore describe some devices which are now being used in practical flight operation. Today, the concept of a piezoelectric, high temperature accelerometer with 2‐pole signal output has been commonly adopted in industrial production of transducers for airborne vibration monitoring.

Invasive transit-time ultrasonic flow measurement involves the use of ultrasonic transducers, which sense the flowing fluid and are the most important parts of an ultrasonic flowmeter. In this study, two ultrasonic transducers were designed, numerically simulated and fabricated to be used in an ultrasonic gas flowmeter.

PZT-5H piezoceramic elements with specific dimensions were designed and used as beating heart inside the transducers. Different methods, including impedance-frequency analysis, optical emission spectroscopy and performance tests in pressurized chambers were used to evaluate the piezoelectric elements, ultrasonic transducer housings and the fabricated transducers, respectively. In addition, finite element method results showed its ability for design stages of ultrasonic transducer.

Experimental results for transit time difference (TTD) and the normalized received voltage were compared with simulation results at the same conditions. There was a quite good agreement between the two method results. Extensive simulation results showed that under the considered range of environmental conditions, the change of acoustic path length has the most impact on TTD, with respect to temperature and pressure. A change of 1 mm in acoustic path length leads to 0.74 per cent change in TTD, approximately. In addition, for normalized received voltage, 1 bar change in pressure has the most impact and its value is as high as 3.76 per cent.

This method is possibly used in ultrasonic gas flowmeter fabrication.

In this work, design, fabrication, experimental tests and numerical simulation of ultrasonic transducers are presented.

Ultrasound is a well-established technology in medical science, though many of the conventional measurement systems (hydrophones and radiation force balances [RFBs]) often lack accuracy and tend to be expensive. This is a significant problem where sensors must be considered to be “disposable” because they inevitably come into contact with biological fluids and expense increases dramatically in cases where a large number of sensors in array form are required. This is inevitably the case where ultrasound is to be used for the in vitro growth stimulation of a large plurality of biological samples in tissue engineering. Traditionally only a single excitation frequency is used (typically 1.5 MHz), but future research demands a larger choice of wavelengths for which a single broadband measurement transducer is desirable. Furthermore, because of implementation conditions there can also be large discrepancies between measurements. The purpose of this paper deals with a very cost-effective alternative to expensive RFBs and hydrophones.

Utilization of cost-effective piezoelectric elements as broadband sensors.

Very effective results with equivalent (if not better) accuracy than expensive alternatives.

This paper concentrates on how very cost-effective piezoelectric ultrasound transducers can be implemented as sensors for ultrasound power measurements with accuracy as good, if not better than those achievable using radiation force balances or hydrophones.

Plantar force is the interface pressure existing between the foot plantar surface and the shoe sole during static or dynamic gait. Plantar force derived from gait and posture plays a critical role for rehabilitation, footwear design, clinical diagnostics and sports activities, and so on. This paper aims to review plantar force measurement technologies based on piezoelectric materials, which can make the reader understand preliminary works systematically and provide convenience for researchers to further study.

The review introduces working principle of piezoelectric sensor, structures and hardware design of plantar force measurement systems based on piezoelectric materials. The structures of sensors in plantar force measurement systems can be divided into four kinds, including monolayered sensor, multilayered sensor, tri-axial sensor and other sensor. The previous studies about plantar force measurement system based on piezoelectric technology are reviewed in detail, and their characteristics and performances are compared.

A good deal of measurement technologies have been studied by researchers to detect and analyze the plantar force. Among these measurement technologies, taking advantage of easy fabrication and high sensitivity, piezoelectric sensor is an ideal candidate sensing element. However, the number and arrangement of the sensors will influence the characteristics and performances of plantar force measurement systems. Therefore, it is necessary to further study plantar force measurement system for better performances.

So far, many plantar force measurement systems have been proposed, and several reviews already introduced plantar force measurement systems in the aspect of types of pressure sensors, experimental setups for foot pressure measurement analysis and the technologies used in plantar shear stress measurements. However, this paper reviews plantar force measurement systems based on piezoelectric materials. The structures of piezoelectric sensors in the measurement systems are discussed. Hardware design applied to measurement system is summarized. Moreover, the main point of further study is presented in this paper.

At present, piezoelectric impedance technology has been used in the study of wood damage monitoring. However, little effort has been made in the research on the application of piezoelectric impedance system to monitor the change of wood moisture content (MC). The monitoring method of wood MC is used by piezoelectric impedance technique in this study.

One piezoceramic transducer is bonded to the surface of wood specimens. The MC of the wood specimens increases gradually from 0% to 60% with 10% increments; the mechanical impedance of the wood specimen will change, and the change in the mechanical impedance of the structure is reflected by monitoring the change in the electrical impedance of lead zirconate titanate. Therefore, this paper investigates the relationship between wood MC change and piezoelectric impedance change to verify the feasibility of the piezoelectric impedance method for monitoring wood MC change.

The experiment verified that the real part of impedance of the wood increased with the increase of wood MC. Besides, the damage index root mean square deviation is introduced to quantify the damage degree of wood under different MC. At the same time, the feasibility and validity of this experiment were verified from the side by finite element simulation. Finally, MC monitoring by piezoelectric impedance technique is feasible.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to apply piezoelectric ceramics to the monitoring of wood MC, which provides a theoretical basis for the follow-up study of a wide range of wood components and even wood structure MC changes.

For a number of years, the possibilities of using polymer or co‐polymer materials exhibiting piezoelectric properties have attracted the attention of those engaged in non‐destructive testing.