Comparison of Passive Cooling Methods Efficiency for Rod Type Piezoceramic Electroacoustic Transducers

During operation, piezoceramic electroacoustic transducers are heated due to electrical and mechanical losses in piezoceramics. The heating of the transducers negatively effects on their operational characteristics, can lead to irreversible consequences and more over to their break-down. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure normal thermal mode of such transducers during their designing. The features of cooling processes on the example of rod type transducer (the most prevalent model of powerful piezoceramic electroacoustic transducers) are investigated. The efficiency of various cooling methods by modeling their thermal field using the finite element method is analyzed. Several options of rod piezoceramic transducers passive cooling are considered and their thermal fields in the stationary conditions are simulated. It is shown that the application of passive cooling design methods, such as changing the shape of components, adding heat removal inserts or heat removal layers, allows reducing the temperature of the transducer heating by 15–30 %. It has been found that the most effective design solution for piezoceramic electroacoustic transducers passive cooling are an insert in the form of a copper cylindrical curved plate and an additional layer of a heat removal mixture of metal powder and silicone. The studies had been carried out made it possible to establish the features of various passive cooling options use for the structures of rod type piezoceramic electroacoustic converters of high power. Changing the shape of the transducer components together with additional cooling can significantly increase the cooling efficiency and ensure that the unpleasant consequences of heating are avoided.