[RaphaelR]

Hi,

I have been modeling piezoelectric acoustic transducers to determine the frequency response spectrum in water.

The specific transducer types I am modeling are monopole ring and dipole bender bar transducers. They are to be operated in a pulse mode: a single sine differential voltage pulse is applied. The frequencies I am modeling are between 500 Hz and 20 kHz.

I have been using a harmonic analysis in workbench 19.1 with both the acoustic and piezoelectric extensions. Materials are modeled as isotropic as a simplification.

My models (for both ring and bender transducers) all suffer from the same issues:

(1) The model shows a much higher response than the experiment at resonance
(2) The model shows a lower response than the experiment at both higher and lower frequencies than resonance
(3) The location of the peaks in the model vs. experiment is substantially different
(4) Typically the difference in response for the model between two designs is much greater than reality

I have attached the response of two different ring transducers for the model vs. experiment to illustrate the problem.

What's wrong and what could be used to improve the fidelity of the model (and be able to use it to predict the behavior of the actual part)?

I suspect that my model may require the addition of damping. What is the best way for acoustic modeling? I know there are several different methods to add damping and that tweaking will be required but I'd like to at least start down the right path.

Any help or insights would be much appreciated as I have very little experience with Ansys and acoustic/piezoelectric modeling and don't know where to start.

Thanks,

Raphael