On the nonlinear dynamics of plate-transducers

Power ultrasonics finds an increasing range of industrial and medical uses. Among the applications involving liquids and gases, ultrasonic plate-transducers play a key role. In these devices, the excitation of opportunely tailored flexural motions of plate elements allows high-directional propagation of sound waves through a variety of media. At high power, plate-transducers are vulnerable to nonlinearities which hamper their scale-up to large industrial plants. This preliminary work aims to study the vibration characteristics of a plate-transducer scale-model by looking at the dynamic effect brought by its constitutive components (i.e. piezoelectric sandwich, mechanical amplifier, and plate radiator).