Design and development of high voltage ultrasonic spike pulser for immersion applications

High voltage ultrasonic spike pulser has been design and developed especially for immersion ultrasonic Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) application requiring high material penetration due to multiple interfaces and long path. The spice simulation of ultrasonic spike pulser has been carried out. The pulser is externally controlled by the host PC through USB interface. The simulation and experiment results are compared with no load and 50 Ω load conditions. The experimental study indicates that the output voltage amplitude of pulser can reach up to -300 V for 10 MHz water-immersed ultrasonic unfocused transducer. Pulser is capable of producing negative spike pulse with 20 ns to 1000 ns half-amplitude pulse width.