P3L-2 The Evaluation of Nonpermanent Acoustic Bonding Agents

Nonpermanent acoustic bonding agents are important for the transfer of acoustic energy between materials. Their use extends over a wide range of applications which encompass industrial, medical, and research applications. One important use has been the characterization of the acoustic properties of solids by bonding transducers or a transducer block configuration to the solid under study. The work reported here characterizes the transfer efficiency of four selected nonpermanent bonding agents in the frequency region from 200 MHz to 800 MHz using two fused quartz blocks with zinc oxide transducers formed at each end and the bond material sandwiched between the blocks. The transfer efficiency is compared to an optical bond condition without the presence of the bond material. The nonpermanent bonding materials studied were glycerol, hysol resin, quartz wax, and black wax with which it was possible to obtain transfer efficiencies near 3 dB of the optically bonded blocks