Modeling piezoelectric material and ultrasound transducers

We discuss piezoelectric and piezoceramic material as well as ultrasound transducers. We study the analytical methods for calculating the impedance of a simple bar of piezoceramic material and a simple ultrasound transducer, and discuss the methodology behind the numerical technique (Finite Element Method) to model a complex ultrasound transducer. With a simple ultrasound transducer model created in the software program PZex, we find out how the impedance is aected when the scale of the relative permittivity is varied. We then create a working model of a complex ultrasound transducer and learn how impedance is affected by varying the size of the electrode driven and adding a propagation layer. We saw that there was not a direct relationship between varying the relative permittivity and the change in impedance as we expected. We saw that varying the size of the electrode and adding a propagation layer created expected impedances.