Design and development of flexural disc projector for low frequency sonar applications

Design and development of a flexural disc projector for an active sonar system is presented. Double bilaminar configuration is preferred, that can handle higher power at higher depths, hence higher source level. Analytical expressions are used to design a base model and the base geometry is modeled in finite element tool ATILA to compute the responses like resonance frequency, TVR, components of stresses etc. Parametric analysis on the base model is done using finite element tool to investigate the effect of dimensions of parts of the projector on the parameters of interest. Based on the design parameters, hardware of a double bilaminar flexural disc projector is realized and the responses are measured in an open tank at different depths. Good agreement is observed between the model predicted responses and the experimentally observed responses.