The Demonstration of Additive Manufacture in Power Ultrasonic and Sonar Transducers

Additive manufacture (AM) has been heralded as a disruptive technology with the potential to revolutionize manufacturing and transform how products are consumed. Within the power ultrasonic and sonar transducer domains, the capability of AM technologies to generate highly complex geometries could facilitate a step change in device performance, yet the usage of metallic additive manufactured parts in power ultrasonic or sonar devices is currently limited. This article demonstrates that it is possible to accurately model, using finite element methods, the vibratory behavior of a power ultrasonic device containing a part fabricated via AM before showing that the vibratory behavior of this device does not significantly vary from an identical device manufactured by conventional methods. Finally, a commercial Tonpilz-like sonar transducer containing a part fabricated by an AM technology is shown to exhibit similar performance to an identical device which contains conventionally manufactured parts.