Date of Award

2013

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Ocean Engineering

Department

Ocean Engineering

First Advisor

Harold Vincent

Abstract

This thesis presents an automated method of tuning underwater transducers. Typically, the efficiency of a piezoelectric transducer's output power is limited by an electrical mismatch between the voltage source and transducer. This mismatch is due to the capacitive reactance of the piezoelectric element. The addition of an appropriately sized inductor to the system can effectively cancel the capacitive reactance and introduce an "electrical resonance" at a given frequency. A prototype system is described and constructed which leverages the effects of additional inductance to produce significant gains in output power of a transducer. This Automated Tuning System (ATS) consists of switching inductor network controlled by a tuning algorithm. Testing demonstrates that the ATS is capable of producing significant off-band gains in transduction efficiency as well as considerably extending the functional bandwidth of the transducer.

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