Finite Element Analysis of Generation and Detection of Lamb Waves Using Piezoelectric Transducers

Abstract

The paper reports the use of Finite Element (FE) simulation and experiments meant to explore the operation conditions of the PieZoelectric wafer Transducer (PZT). Piezoelectrics is the coupling of structural and electric fields and may be solved using the multi-physics approach. Accordingly, three different multiphysics models were developed to investigate a plane strain problem. The first one includes two PZTs mounted on an aluminium plate and is used to model both the emission and reception signals. The next two ones are developed to separately model the emission and detection processes, in order to decrease the computational effort. The wave displacements are generated by a PZT-like actuator and the output voltage is obtained at a PZT receiver both by a multi-physics approach. The analysis considered the transducer lengths, the effects of the finite pulse width, the pulse dispersion and the detailed interaction between the piezoelectric element and the transmitting medium. The transmitted and received signals for so-called A0 and S0 modes have maxima close to the frequencies predicted in other works. A series of sensitivity curves relating the generation and receiving of Lamb waves were also determined and plotted as a function of the pulse center frequency and of the PZT lengths.