Design of a Broadband Cavity Baffle Bender Transducer

Abstract

As low-frequency and broadband acoustic emission capability is beneficial to the detection range and acoustic communication speed of small scale autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), this type of transducer is required, especially in cases of complex acoustic environments. A broadband bender transducer with cavity baffle that suits small scale AUV is proposed. Rather than additional benders, a passive cavity baffle, which would be capable of providing mutual radiation and a fluid cavity mode, is introduced to a single bender. The bending resonant frequency is reduced by the mutual radiation between the bender and the cavity baffle, the cavity baffle extends the lower limit of the available frequency band of the transducer, the liquid resonant frequency behind the former expands the higher limit, then the cavity baffle bender transducer fills the role of radiating low-frequency and broadband emissions through multimode coupling. The finite element method is used to analyze the acoustic performance of the transducer under different baffle conditions. Then, a prototype of the broadband cavity baffle bender transducer is developed according to the optimized parameters of simulation. The acoustic parameters of the prototype were measured in an anechoic pool. The resonant frequency measured in water of the bender itself is 3 kHz, and the −3dB bandwidth is 560 Hz. The prototype test results show that the cavity baffle scheme can improve the −3dB bandwidth of the bender from 560 Hz to 1000 Hz, which fundamentally realizes the expectations of the prototype design.