Piezopolymer Interdigital Transducers for a Structural Health Monitoring System

The paper describes the design, the technology, and the characterization of an array of 16 elements of airborne ultrasonic transducers. The array is connected to a dedicated electronic platform that provides the 16 channels programmable analog front-end electronics and the synchronization and data acquisition and transmission for real-time target detection and tracking or for high-resolution imaging. The transducers are designed to operate at 150 kHz to cover a distance of about 200 mm and with featured narrow vertical directivity and wide horizontal directivity to scan an almost plane section with a linear array configuration.