Design of a Novel Encapsulation Based on Hair Cell Vector Hydrophone

Abstract

According to sensitive structure of vector hydrophone which imitates fish lateral line cells, a novel encapsulation of polyurethane is proposed, that is, using polyurethane, the same material as sound-transparent cap, instead of castor oil to package. It is desirable that the novel encapsulation may effectively solve the problem of vector hydrophone’s low sensitivity. On the basis of analysis theoretical model of sound-transparent cap’s three layer mediums, this paper simulated the whole encapsulation structure by ANSYS. It can be concluded that the sensitivity is 0.267mV/Pa, resonance frequency is 1151.37 Hz. Finally, the prototype of the vector hydrophone was fabricated and preliminary characterization tests of the hydrophone were performed. Results show that the novel encapsulation hydrophone possesses satisfactory directional pattern and the free-field voltage sensitivity is -188.9 dB, which is 8.8dB higher than castor oil encapsulation.