7.

2 The Piezo-electric Plate as Transmitter 129

Fig.7.10. Radiator between two materials 1 and 2

Formulas (7.8) and (7.9) should be regarded only as approximations because their deriva-
tion presupposes that the oscillating piezoelectric plate behaves like a mass suspended by a
spring However, this is only approximately so, because, particularly in the case of high damp-
ing, the deviations are considerable. In the testing of materials by means of sound pulses
damping coefficients of this order are necessary, so that when calculating the resonance am-
plitude and the band width, considerably more complex, exact calculations should be used
[1302].
When using a piezo-electric plate as an ultrasonic generator, the relation be-
tween the damping coefficient and the constants of the contiguous materials is of
interest. Let it be assumed that the plate is located between two materials 1 and 2
with the acoustic impedances ZI and Z2 (Z = gc) (Fig. 7.10). As long as ZI and Z2
are both smaller thanZo, the acoustic impedance of the piezo-electric material, i.e.
for sonic ally soft coupling on both sides, the following applies:

b = (Zo + ZI)(ZO + Z2) . (7.10)

(Zo - ZI) (Zo - Z2)
(For derivation of equations see [1302].)
Equation (7.10) is also valid if both contiguous materials are sonically harder
than the piezo-electric material. If, however, one of the two materials is sonic ally
softer while the other is sonically harder, the piezo-electric plate oscillates only at
Ai4 resonance, i.e. the characteristic frequency of the plate damped in this way is
only half as high as given by Eq. (7.5), and the damping coefficient in this case is:
b = (Zo + ZI)2 (Zo + Z2)2 (7.11)
(Zo - ZI)2 (Zo - Z2)2 .
Example. Let it be assumed that a quartz plate is mounted so that one side borders on air and
the other on water. From the values ZI = 0.4 x 103, Z2 = 1.5 X 106, and Zo = 15.2 X 106 Ns/m 3
it follows that b = 1.22 (Fig. 7.8 a). This quartz is now cemented at the back to vulcanized rub-
ber. From ZI = 2.8 X 106 we get b = 1.75 (Fig. 7.8b). This applies not only to a plate of 1 MHz,
but according to Eq.(7.10) the damping coefficient is independent of the resonance fre-
quency. If, however, we now let the quartz cemented to vulcanized rubber radiate into alumi-
nium instead of water, so that Z2 = 16.9 X 106, the resonance frequency of the plate is now
only half as high. To facilitate the comparison Figs. 7.8 and 7.9 however, have been drawn as
if a plate of half thickness were used for this test. In this case the damping coefficient
should be calculated according to Eq. (7.11); this gives b = 730, i.e. in this case the plate is al-
ready damped almost aperiodically because the amplitude of the second oscillation is now
only 11730 of that of the first and the third only 117302 = 11533000. For practical applications
it must, however, be taken into consideration that a thin layer of cement between crystal and
aluminium reduces the effective acoustic impedance of the material so that invariably smaller
damping values will be obtained in tests.
In practice, the coupling conditions of a probe may fluctuate considerably with the sur-
face quality, surface shape and material of the test piece, and therefore also the damping. In
order to reduce excessively large fluctuations the unchanged acoustic impedance ZI of the