An Experimental and Theoretical Study of Impact of Device Parameters on Performance of AlN/Sapphire-Based SAW Temperature Sensors

The impact of device parameters, including AlN film thickness (hAlN), number of interdigital transducers (NIDT), and acoustic propagation direction, on the performance of c-plane AlN/sapphire-based SAW temperature sensors with an acoustic wavelength (λ) of 8 μm, was investigated. The results showed that resonant frequency (fr) decreased linearly, the quality factor (Q) decreased and the electromechanical coupling coefficient (Kt2) increased for all the sensors with temperature increasing from −50 to 250 °C. The temperature coefficients of frequency (TCFs) of sensors on AlN films with thicknesses of 0.8 and 1.2 μm were −65.57 and −62.49 ppm/°C, respectively, indicating that a reduction in hAlN/λ favored the improvement of TCF. The acoustic propagation direction and NIDT did not obviously impact the TCF of sensors, but they significantly influenced the Q and Kt2 of the sensors. At all temperatures measured, sensors along the a-direction exhibited higher fr, Q and Kt2 than those along the m-direction, and sensors with NIDT of 300 showed higher Q and Kt2 values than those with NIDT of 100 and 180. Moreover, the elastic stiffness of AlN was extracted by fitting coupling of modes (COM) model simulation to the experimental results of sensors along different directions considering Euler transformation of material parameter-tensors. The higher fr of the sensor along the a-direction than that along the m-direction can be attributed to its larger elastic stiffness c11, c22, c44, and c55 values.

Impact of THz Frequency on Underwater Acoustic Wave Propagation for Short Range Wireless Applications

Acoustic propagation in seawater is an important aspect of scientific investigation. However, the impact of the THz scale frequencies for acoustic propagation is not included in the studies. Thus, a finite element analysis of such propagation in a seawater medium is presented in this paper applying THz frequencies. A transmitter (circular with a diameter of 14 mm, a thickness of 3 mm) and a rectangular receiver (20×10×0.5 mm3) are designed to trace the variations in the propagation mediums. A propagation medium of seawater (70×40×60 mm3) with ice and softwood is modelled. A scale of frequencies (1 kHz to 1 THz) is applied to trace the impact on the propagation pattern. It is found that THz range frequencies provide a very small wavelength. As a result, the potential propagation distance is very small. As such, the sound pressure level, displacements of the receiver and pressure field shows very rapid drops in the magnitude. This work considers only 70 mm as propagation distance, yet the sharp decrement of performance parameters suggests that it is rather inconvenient to achieve useful efficiency using THz frequencies for acoustic propagation.

Practical considerations for ray casting shear layer corrections

Aircraft noise reduction technology development has been aided by the use of acoustic phased arrays to identify component-level locations of noise sources. Acoustic phased arrays are commonly used in both closed-wall and open-jet wind tunnels, thus requiring accurate acoustic propagation models to focus the array. In particular, open-jet wind tunnels have complex flow fields including a free shear layer that the acoustic waves must propagate through. A method using ray tracing is reviewed and an enhancement proposed to reduce the computational time for cases requiring a large number of rays. The proposed reduced ray casting method uses ray tracing to the extreme edges of the region of interest and limits all casted acoustic rays to within that region. The results showed that a hemispherical spiral discretization had lower error in the estimated acoustic propagation time than uniform angular discretization. The proposed reduced ray casting method showed similar accuracy as the original ray casting method but with improvement in the computational times when the number of cast rays was greater than 3200 as needed for modeling acoustic propagation in larger industrial sized open-jet wind tunnels.

A Vector Wavenumber Integration Model of Underwater Acoustic Propagation Based on the Matched Interface and Boundary Method

Acoustic particle velocities can provide additional energy flow information of the sound field; thus, the vector acoustic model is attracting increasing attention. In the current study, a vector wavenumber integration (VWI) model was established to provide benchmark solutions of ocean acoustic propagation. The depth-separated wave equation was solved using finite difference (FD) methods with second- and fourth-order accuracy, and the sound source singularity in this equation was treated using the matched interface and boundary method. Moreover, the particle velocity was calculated using the wavenumber integration method, consistent with the calculation of the sound pressure. Furthermore, the VWI model was verified using acoustic test cases of the free acoustic field, the ideal fluid waveguide, the Bucker waveguide, and the Munk waveguide by comparing the solutions of the VWI model, the analytical formula, and the image method. In the free acoustic field case, the errors of the second- and fourth-order FD schemes for solving the depth-separated equation were calculated, and the actual orders of accuracy of the FD schemes were tested. Moreover, the time-averaged sound intensity (TASI) was calculated using the pressure and particle velocity, and the TASI streamlines were traced to visualize the time-independent energy flow in the acoustic field and better understand the distribution of the acoustic transmission loss.