TY - CONF A1 - Gaal, Mate A1 - Daschewski, Maxim A1 - Bartusch, Jürgen A1 - Schadow, Florian A1 - Dohse, Elmar A1 - Kreutzbruck, Marc A1 - Weise, Matthias A1 - Beck, Uwe T1 - Novel air-coupled ultrasonic transducer combining the thermoacoustic with the piezoelectric effect N2 - In recent years, there has been an increasing industrial demand for one-sided inspection of various structures by means of air-coupled ultrasonic technique. Lightweight structures based on carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers may have very complex shapes, making air-coupled transmission difficult or even impossible. The inspection of concrete structures is another example where one-sided inspection is required. To address these challenges a new type of transducer for air-coupled pulse-echo inspection was developed, which unites two principles: thermoacoustic emission and piezoelectric reception. The thermoacoustic emitter is a titanium electrode with a thickness of several tens of nanometer. This electrode was deposited onto charged cellular polypropylene, which serves as a piezoelectric receiver. The thermoacoustic transmission is based on a transformation of the thermal energy of an electrically heated electrode into the acoustic energy of an ultrasonic wave. Thermoacoustic emitters provide resonance-free behaviour and thus extremely broadband pulses. Charged cellular polypropylene is piezoelectric due to the polarization of its cells and it is well matched to air, with a Young modulus in the order of magnitude of MPa. In this contribution we present some pulse-echo measurements with the first prototypes of the combined thermoacoustic-piezoelectric transducer. T2 - World Conference of Non-Destructive Testing CY - Munich, Germany DA - 13.6.2016 KW - Thermoacoustic KW - Piezoelectric KW - Ultrasonic transducer KW - Ferroelectret PY - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-367151 VL - 158 SP - Mo.1.F.4, 1 EP - 6 AN - OPUS4-36715 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Schweitzer, T. T1 - Experimental analysis of the acoustic field of an ultrasonic pulse induced by a fluidic switch N2 - Ultrasonic inspection is a common tool for non-destructive testing in civil engineering (NDT-CE). Currently, transducers are coupled directly to the specimen surface, which makes the inspection time-consuming. Air-coupled ultrasound (ACU) transducers are more time-efficient but need a high pressure amplitude as the impedance mismatch between the air and the concrete is high and large penetration depth is needed for the inspection. Current approaches aim at eliminating the impedance mismatch between the transducer and the air to gain amplitude; however, they hardly fulfill the NDT-CE requirements. In this study, an alternative approach for ultrasound generation is presented: the signal is generated by a fluidic switch that rapidly injects a mass flow into the ambience. The acoustic field, the flow field, and their interaction are investigated. It is shown that the signal has dominant frequencies in the range of 35–60 kHz, and the amplitude is comparable to that of a commercial ACU transducer. KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Ultrasonic transducer KW - Acoustic-flow interaction PY - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-523862 VL - 149 IS - 4 SP - 2150 EP - 2158 AN - OPUS4-52386 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -