Characterization of Piezoelectric Ceramic Transducer for Accurate speed-of-Spound Measurement

Published

July 30, 2010

Author(s)

Keith A. Gillis, Jintao Zhang, H. Lin

Abstract

In this paper, the piezoelectric ceramics mounted on the endplates of a cylindrical resonator were used as the source and detector for acoustic speed measurements. The perturbations of the longitudinal gas modes of the cavity due to the compliance of the diaphragms (10 mm diameter, 0.3 mm thick) and the attached transducers were estimated from first-order perturbation theory. The estimated fractional shifts of the resonance frequencies in argon caused by the source and detector were 0.7 × 10^-6 at 0.1 MPa and 273.16 K. The high signal-to-noise ratio (up to 1 × 10⁴) we obtained with these transducers makes them suitable for acoustic thermometry. Heat generated by dissipation in transducers is an important consideration. The dissipation that we measured in the source transducer was only 0.7 microwatts at the working voltage (7 V) and frequency (1 kHz).

Proceedings Title

4th International Workshop on Progress in Determining the Boltzmann Constant

Volume

31

Conference Dates

September 22-24, 2009

Conference Location

Torino

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Boltzmann constant, acoustic thermometry, resonator, piezoelectric ceramic, PZT, dissipation

Citation

Gillis, K. , Zhang, J. and Lin, H. (2010), Characterization of Piezoelectric Ceramic Transducer for Accurate speed-of-Spound Measurement, 4th International Workshop on Progress in Determining the Boltzmann Constant, Torino, -1, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=904670 (Accessed October 11, 2025)